


Visceral

by motherconfessor



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Pocket Universe, Astral Projection, Dream Sex, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Healing, Heartache, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Psychological Torture, Romance, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2019-05-20 21:42:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 60,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14902566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motherconfessor/pseuds/motherconfessor
Summary: Alex keeps dreaming of Sara Lance.





	1. Chapter 1

Alex dreamt she was on the Waverider. She could feel the familiar hum of the engine beneath her bare toes, sending out soft thrums like a cat’s purr. She had only spent half a day on the ship, weeks ago, but she knew its feel; the long, low tactile sense of an engine riding through space and time.

It was quiet, the lighting dim, around the edge of the room. Soft, heavy breaths came from an occupant sleeping on a queen mattress, one side of the bed up against the wall instead of in its centre. Alex took a few steps closer, surprised by how young the face appeared. The breath paused, and Alex knew then that she had awaken her.

“Sorry,” she said. The eyes opened slowly, a curious pinch at the centre of the brow.

“Sorry?” Sara asked.

“I didn’t mean to disturb your dream,” Alex explained, before remembering that this was _her_ dream. Sara blinked at her, a still-half-asleep look on her face that Alex hadn’t had the chance to see _that_ morning. That morning, from that night, where Sara’s lips had pressed over every inch of her body.

“How do you know it’s night, here?” she asked, looking around Sara’s room to avoid meeting the woman’s eye just then.

“I spent a long time living in a mountain where I wouldn’t see daylight for weeks at times,” Sara answered. It was an odd thing to say, Alex thought. But this was her dream and nonsense wasn’t something entirely new to the concept of her mind. “When did you arrive here?”

“Just now, I think,” Alex answered. She couldn’t remember arriving. In fact, she had a dull awareness that she’d been somewhere else. Maybe dreaming, maybe falling asleep in her room. “I don’t know why,” she admitted.

“But you came all this way to visit me?” There was a flirtatious, curious lilt to the voice that brought a smile to Alex’s face.

“I suppose?” she offered back, awkwardly. “I’m not sure why I dreamt of here.” She walked across the bedroom, the room was clear and tidy, void of any personal items, before she sat at the end of Sara’s bed and felt her heart clench as she wondered why she _had_ dreamt of here. _Maggie_ , she thought in a clear, thoughtless moment. The dream faded.

Alex awoke in her bed, the heartache physically hurting her chest. Turning over, she looked at the alarm clock and watched it tick over the movements. She could hear the sound of night-traffic from the streets below, the distant sounds of cars and trucks from people who shouldn’t be, but were awake at three a.m.

Despite how large the bed was, how much she had once enjoyed spreading out over the mattress like a starfish, Alex kept to her side, shutting her eyes and pretending that for just a moment, Maggie was there beside her, at her back. It made falling asleep easier if she did.

She slept through the rest of the night, her dreams becoming nonsense work dreams about unnecessary paperwork drills. In the morning, she dressed for work, ate cereal for breakfast and drank the last of the orange juice –– straight from the bottle because no one was around to care –– before she took her recycling downstairs.

The glass bottles tinkered inside the cardboard box she used as a disposal bin, before she threw it into the industrial one outside of the apartment block, next to the underground parking.

Without allowing her memories to dwell on some ridiculous thought, she went back inside, grabbed her bag and helmet and walked over to the parking lot to start her bike. In the lot, as she pulled her gloves on, her neighbour from across the hall was climbing into his silver car. He gave her a half wave, which she returned. Twice Phillip had asked about her fiancé. The first time Alex ignored his question and the second she admitted that they had broken up.

Since then, Phillip had been awkward. Or maybe she’d been awkward and Phillip became awkward because of her awkwardness.

Alex put the thought out of her head as she rode her motorbike to the DEO parking lot,using the time to focus on what she needed to do for the day. When she arrived at the DEO parking lot, she used her keycard to gain access into it, before driving the bike to her designated spot. There were over twenty camera’s throughout the lot, all manned in a clockwork routine by a designated officer. Alex tried to know them all by name.

She swiped her pass to allow access inside the elevator, went down three hallways and into the locker room. The heartache from the night before had begun to ease inside of her chest by the time she had changed out of her motorcycling gear and into her work clothes. Becoming only a small, tight ball as she dropped her bag into the locker and pulled out the water bottle she brought. There, she took deep drink of its contents.

It was just water, but she had considered drinking harder stuff at work about the same amount she considered calling in sick to work. Which was to say, regularly but with no follow through.

“Agent Danvers,” Mandy Sullivan said, giving her a nod as she changed out of her own work gear, her heart shaped face shining from whatever she had finished up. “How’s your sis?”

“Good,” Alex nodded, “Up to something good, too, no doubt.” She offered Mandy a smile, and thought about her sister’s own heartache. A choice that had not been made by her. Kara had spent months thinking that Mon-El had possibly died, to find out that it had been _seven_ years for him instead, that he had married and moved on, was hard.

Alex was early for her shift by about half an hour. It wasn’t enough time to do much except a few good morning greetings as night shift gave their handover to dayshift. She managed to check over the intranet for any interesting blasts, double-check her roster for the week and glance over any emails that were important. There wasn’t any, just the usual reminders of new legislations coming into place that effected them.

J’onn was already on shift when she arrived. Going over the day-to-day routine of updates and surveillance. The DEO’s knowledge on local system aliens, and those that were further away. A few extra terrestrial here and there looked potentially dangerous –– as well as a bit of chatter about a blackmarket for alien technology again –– but it all remained in the routine of a normal day. The most interesting thing was that there was to be an ops team-up with the CIA for the black market weapons deal that was meant to go down.

It wasn’t under Alex’s district, but it was good to keep in the loop.

After lunch, Alex looked over her team of twelve recruits, going through drills and weapons training with them to get a feel of their development. Some were shaping up well and would be ready to take over a command of their own group in a few years. Others were up-to-scratch, but had peaked at their abilities, happy to remain a subordinate taking orders.

Nilo Georgiou was Alex’s biggest pain and probably her most favourite recruit yet. The kid was determined to prove that he was good enough, carrying his insecurities as a sharpened weapon as he obeyed her, but made sure to add his own flare into the tactic. Twice he had stood up to her, sure of his order. Twice he had been wrong, and took it with grudging agreement after everything had gone to hell in the training simulation. The kid had been good before, but a hell of a risk until he shaped up. Still, Alex could see in him what the police commissioner had. A good kid with soft heart beneath stone.

Alex rode him hard, cultivating him into being her protégé. He had grown a lot from when he had first arrived, but was determined to do things his way. Because of this, Alex had gotten approval from J’onn and had set up an exercise to provide a hands-on simulation in raid tactics. Georgiou had been surprised when she told him that he’d be taking point. She’d held him back in the classroom they had been using for one of her more specialised parts in their education in the DEO; Alien biology. It was not well received by most, but she held their attention long enough to knock a few bits of knowledge into them.

When class had finished, she had requested Nilo to stay back, shooing off the others with a derisive look that there would be a test tomorrow on a few theory practices, so she expected them to go home studying. Failure, of any kind, was an immediate disqualification from the recruitment course. They all knew that. Being halfway through the fourteen month program, they had seen a fair few people drop off like flies.

Nonetheless, Nilo seemed surprised, not fearful when she asked him to stay back. He had packed his notebook and pens away –– given that electronic devices weren’t allowed (and wouldn’t work unless DEO approved them thanks to Winn) –– throwing his backpack over one shoulder and looked every bit the college student his age was of.

“I spoken with the other Agents who have been training you guys, and we’ve come to an agreement about who’ll be taking point,” she said to him.

It didn’t take much to put two-and-two together for him. “Me?” he asked, looking as though she’d told him that he was nominated for a Nobel Peace prize.

“Is that a problem?” she asked, lifting her chin up to study him.

The kid blinked. Not that he was actually a kid, only six or seven years younger than her, with an impressively colourful history with the police. But in experience with the DEO, he was a kid. Just as the other recruits were, even if a few were similar ages to Alex.

“No problem…ma’am,” he added, his eyes twinkling with mirth. “I won’t let you down.”

“Don’t let your _team_ down,” Alex pointed out. “Next week, an hour before the simulation, I’ll give you the schematics of the building with your team and strict orders in what to do. If you follow what I say, no one should get hurt. If anyone _does_ it’s on you.” It’d been an unintentional harsh addition, but Nilo took it seriously.

He nodded, a smile threatening to break out, but contained it while puffing up his chest. Then, as if considering what it really meant, he opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t. Alex watched as he swallowed his words with a contemplative look.

“Do you have something to say?” she asked.

He hesitated, careful in his words as he asked “Why me? Saunders is better suited for the job. And you like her.”

Saunders was a young, hard-working, by-the-book woman around the same age as Nilo. She would rise hard and fast, but Alex had a gut-feeling about her that she wasn’t leadership material as much as she tried to be. She didn’t have the same sense of loyalty and comradeship that Nilo did, and her tactics didn’t fit DEO standards. None of that was information she wished to share with Nilo, however.

“Because I chose you,” she said in answer to him. “Is that a problem?” A soft, eased smile tugged at one side of his face, showing off a dimple.

“Nah, you’re good,” he said, nodding his head, before quickly adding, “Ma’am.”

“Watch yourself,” she added, “And study hard. You have one week.”

He gave her a mock salute, exiting out of classroom. Alex watched him turn away before she let herself smile. Her heart didn’t hurt so much now after a day like that.

As training had finished, she took the central intelligence floor and used the last four hours to finish off paperwork and watch as Kara saved lives. Her sister was flying around, putting out apartment fires and talking people down from jumping with an empathetic voice that reached to a much needed heart.

As her shift turned to an end, and Kara’s job seemed finished for the night, Alex handed over to the night shift, giving a nod to Mandy Sullivan who yawned over a thermos of coffee. “Heard you’re teaming up with the suits,” she said to the woman.

“Hah! They’ll pull out before it even begins, like they always do.”

“We’ll see,” Alex said as she closed her locker, giving a small nod to a few of the nightshift she was familiar with. Most of the DEO still thought of her as a hard-ass, but there were a select few who had seen a softer side to her. A few she considered reassigning so they wouldn’t ruin her hard-ass reputation, but kept in usual rotation because in the end, they worked well where they were.

Kara stood outside of the DEO lockers, eager to see her. Immediately she looped her arm in Alex’s and rattled on about her greatest save and how _excited_ the little boy had been, admitting she was his favourite against Superman. “Did you know that Barry said that Supergirl’s gaining some traction in Earth-1,” Kara said, a pleased, proud smile on her lips. “Maybe I should branch out, starting saving them too. Barry has action figures of himself.”

“You have action figures of yourself _here_ ,” Alex said.

“Yeah, but there’s like…me and Clark. It’s not the same,” Kara shrugged.

“One universe isn’t enough for you?” Alex asked. Kara just hummed, a gentle bounce in her step as she walked Alex to the elevator. “So what are we doing tonight?”

“Pizza.” Kara said

“Pizza and tv?” Alex said back at her with an incredulous look.

“Yup! Pizza, tv and ice cream.”

Alex looked at her with apprehension. Ice cream was Kara’s upset food, but she seemed happy enough at the moment. “Is there something I should know?” she asked.

Kara just smiled, hiding the world and all its problems within herself. Though she looked more like the cat that got cream than the morose figure she’d been before, Alex wasn’t entirely convinced. As much as Kara tried to keep thoughts like that to herself, she often let her emotions seep across to everyone else’s. As-so-far she seemed…not completely back to her usual Kara-crazy-joyful self, but there was no denying that she wasn’t happy, at least.

Maybe, like her, she was beginning to accept that Mon-El was gone. Just like Maggie was gone.

_There_ the heart-pang struck her chest and flooded into her soul, erasing all the good the day had done for her.

Alex missed Maggies. She missed her presence, missed speaking to her, missed hearing her voice and most of all, missed feeling her body against hers at night. Alex felt like all her heart did was just miss, miss, _miss_ right now until it became a singular, consuming emotion that thrummed from her heart with every beat, sending waves of sorrow through her body.

“I’ll see you there at mine, okay?” Kara said, interrupting her sullen thoughts just before the elevator shut, the door closing on Kara’s grin. Alex felt a breath exhale from her self, wondering if she could just ditch as she considered the idea of socialising, even if it was with her sister, as a draining activity now that her heart had gone backing to _missing_. But she couldn’t help but remember the empty glass bottles she’d thrown in the trash and the sales assistant at the liquor store around the corner from her apartment who knew her by name now.

“Alex! My favourite customer,” he had said to her. _That_ had been a wake-up call. Though the old man was a sweet gentlemen who spoke at lengths about scotch-whiskey with her.

She should give her liver a break. Pizza, ice-cream, some bad horror movie, it was all part of the heartache cure.

At least she wasn’t crying anymore, so there was that at least.

Alex didn’t drive home, instead she drove to her sister’s, making the decision finalised for herself.

Kara was all set for pizza and movies when she arrived, blanket over her lap, popcorn just finished and poured into her big, plastic yellow bowl that was specifically the popcorn bowl. If Alex were to look in the freezer, there would probably be cookies and cream ice cream, ready to go.

“What movie did you pick out?”

“Aliens.” Kara said, a mischievous smile on her lips as she pointed the tv controller. “I actually enjoyed the first Alien movie recently. It wasn’t as offensive as I remembered it.”

Years ago, Alex had made Kara watch it and her sister had been _outraged_ that that was what humans had thought first Alien contact would be. But, Kara had been sixteen at the time, and Clark and Kara _were_ the first globally known alien contact on the Earth, so…it stood to reason that movies shifted with the time and generally presented a more positive light.

“You know, I remember you being _obsessed_ with Ripley. You had some god-awful poster you would take down no matter how much I begged.”

Taking off her boots, Alex tried to remember. She must have had a poster from the third movie with Winona Ryder, she thought. Which seemed blatantly obvious as to _why_ given what she knew now, but at the time had seemed perfectly acceptable for a young (presumed) straight girl to have on her wall –– after all, she had protested that Ripley was an _idol_ for women.

This of course still stood, but…it was definitely more complicated.

“I wonder where Mum put that poster.”

“Oh…nowhere,” Kara said, looking far too suspicious. Alex didn’t even want to know. Choosing to ignore it as she stole a set of her sister’s more comfortable pyjamas pants, stripping off her bra and shirt, replacing it with softer, loose material before coming to sit beside Kara on the lounge. “You’re getting the Pizza when it arrives,” she said, settling in and letting Kara click on the movie from the streaming app.

But Kara paused, turning to look at her for a moment, “How are you?” she asked, empathy radiating from her voice as she tried to reach out. Alex knew that her sister wanted the truth, wanted an opportunity to help however she could, just like last time –– but there was nothing that could be helped. What she felt was heartache. It was solitary and despite how much she wanted to sink into it and drag Kara with her, she wouldn’t.

“Good,” Alex responded, “My recruits are shaping up. Nilos is making headway into becoming a great field agent, I mean, they all are, but he’s really something. I’m glad the commissioner nudged him our way.”

Kara eased, relaxing into the couch and Alex held her pleased expression, drawing from the day as she pretended that that’s all there was to it. “That’s good to hear,” Kara said, sounding relieved.

For a moment, Alex wished that her sister could hear through her lies. Even if it wasn’t fair to place that onto her shoulders. She felt it on her tongue, almost there to say, _actually ––_ but she didn’t. She just smiled at Kara and waited for her to click to movie on.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She should have kissed her.

She was on the waverider again, in Sara’s room. Why, she wondered, was she drawn here again? Was it a smell that drew her back, or a feeling or…perhaps her subconscious was trying to tell her something. Maybe that she should imagine a more personalised room for Sara because this sparsely decorated room was reminiscent of her early days at the DEO and it just seemed like a lazy subconscious parallel to back when she had been lying to Kara about her living arrangements.

It was almost freudian.

Alex let out a soft exhale, awakening Sara with the muted sound.

Sara’s eyes blinked in the dull light, meeting hers. Then, as she apparently became aware of her surrounding, she rose from her bed to sit up, running a hand through her hair to meet Alex’s eyes. It was a careful movement, drawing the blonde strands away from her face and over her shoulders as if she was in some glamorous hair commercial. Then, in a way that only Sara could add multiple meanings to, she uttered out, “Hey.”

“Hey,” Alex responded back. But where Sara’s had been a _how are you, how you doin’,_ but also, _why are you here_ sort of ‘hey’, Alex’s contained voice carried only the single, traditional meaning. Hello.

“I wondered if you’d visit me again,” Sara said, giving a cheeky smile as she tilted her head. Without intention or implicit suggestion, the blonde hair fell from where it had covered the side of her face to reveal a friction burn across her cheek. Instantly, Alex zeroed in on the burn mark before examining the blooming bruise on her jawline

“What happened?” she asked, coming to sit down on the bed and take Sara’s face into her hands, inspecting the abrasion for any signs of infection, or possible grit that might still be built up in the raw skin. Whoever had cleaned it had done a decent job of removing any dirty from it though. If kept clean, it would heal over fine within a few weeks. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have a dressing on it to protect any stray bits of dust from sinking into the exposed layer of skin –– though exposure to air was probably good for it too.

Sara waved her hand, though didn’t move her head from Alex’s touch. “Oh, you know,” she answeredbefore throwing Alex trademark smile. “Thought I’d get thrown across the floor for the fun of it.”

Alex didn’t allow herself to respond to either smile or comment. Her focus became singular in making sure there were fractions or bruised organs to worry about. She looked over Sara as if she were another patient, or rather, as though she were Kara. From the cuts to her legs, to the bandage on her arm hiding sutures, Alex’s investigated her for any hint of improper medical care and moved onto the next bruise, the next laceration or abrasion. Sara’s knuckles had been grazed too, which explained a nasty bruise forming over her jaw. Definitely a fight, and one that Alex hoped the other person walked away from worse. But when she found her fingers closing in on lifting the singlet Sara wore to bed, she paused, realising then that she wasn’t Sara’s physician and that Sara was not someone in her care in the first place.

Her fingers curled back into her fist and she pulled away, feeling awkward in the movement. Instead, her eye caught an odd lump of Sara’s arm.

“Who wrapped _this?_ ” she asked, pointing to a particular, unnecessarily thick bandage that was wrapped around Sara’s right shoulder.

“Nathaniel was preoccupied,” Sara answered, pulling her hair over to the left side, out of the way from the unwinding bandage.

Once unwound, Alex looked at the shoulder, eyeing the dressing before taking care to wrap it firmly over the arm, unwittingly finding herself holding the arm in place with her right hand as her left wound the bandage. It was during the process that she met Sara’s eyes, sparkling with some unsaid comment that only seemed to make the woman’s smile grow more as Alex found a flush running from her cheeks to across her nose and drawing up to her hairline.

“Do you have any scissors?” she asked, looking away from her.

Sara nodded to the draw beside her.

She looked over to where the drawer was, just in reach if she were to lean over Sara’s legs to get it. She didn’t want to let go of the taut bandage she had in place, so rather than stand up and walk around to the drawer, she leant over the woman’s knees and pulled out, not a pair of house scissors, but something that looked as if it had been potentially stolen from an emergency room. They were the type of scissors you bought in bulk, not singular. And definitely weren’t forcutting up just any material. More so, inside the drawer, there contained a few rolls of bandages, still packaged, four boxes of multiple use plastic adhesives, a few heat packs, aspirin and other first aid objects, a few of which were also hospital grade. Although the objects were an added touch that Alex felt like Sara would carry in her room, it did bring cause to a disapproving look on her face as she snipped off a good two feet of bandage from her arm.

“What?” Sara asked.

“Nothing,” she said. Then added, “Just seems like an interesting pair of scissors.” She looked up in time to watch mock shock fill the woman’s face.

“Are you implying, Ms Danvers, that I _stole_ these?” Sara said, acting aghast. “Because I will have you know that I _found_ them.”

“Mm, and sterilised them, too I hope.”

“Well, Gideon did, but same thing, right?”

Alex laughed, pausing in her action to meet the woman’s eyes. Sara’s expression was soft, but a wide grin showed off her teeth before it slipped away into a satisfied smirk. She watched then as a chin jutted up as if to dare her to argue that she _had_ stolen them.

“I thought Gideon had her own futuristic healing tools,” Alex said, as she finished off the bandage, ensuring that it was sturdily wrapped into place. Her fingers ran around the edge. Enough room that it shouldn’t cut off blood flow with any strenuous activity. Not that Sara _should_ be doing any strenuous activity, but no doubt, she would.

“Gideon does, but I like to let the body heal naturally in-between missions,” Sara answered. “I don’t build up some kind of a tolerance if Gideon always heals it. Plus, if something happens and she’s not there, we have back up, analogue supplies, as it were.”

“Makes sense,” Alex said, following the meaning. She allowed her fingers to linger for a few beats longer on the arm before drawing her hands away. “There,” she said, placing the scissors onto the nightstand, next to the unnecessary two feet of bandages. “How does that feel?”

“Much better. Thanks doc,” Sara said, throwing her a particular smile Alex wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to. It tugged at her lips, radiating from her eyes and made her vividly aware of the last time Sara had smiled at her like that. “There’s more to learn about you than how you kick ass,” she said in that too familiar Sara tone.

“Plenty more,” Alex said. “I can also sequence your DNA.”

“Is that so? I bet you get all the ladies when you tell tham.”

“It has won me aplenty of lovers in the past,” Alex jested, “Quite an impressive skill to have.”

“It is,” Sara said, giving her a look that gave Alex pause. Sara wasn’t just flirting with her, she realised. She was looking at her in a way that seemed impressed, but also…pleased. As if she expected it of her. It was a strange look she didn’t feel used to. Didn’t know how to respond or reply so instead of saying something, she pulled her hands into her lap and sat on the end of bed, biting her lip as she felt Sara’s knee nudge against her.

“Were you…studying to be a doctor before you were recruited to the DEO?”

“What gave you the idea that I was recruited?” Alex asked.

“Special government department that isn’t widely known? I’m sure most of its occupants are recruited rather than externally advertised. Probably a few internal transfers from military or FBI, maybe Homeland, but you’re not military. I could buy FBI, but it doesn’t quite fit. So… _recruited_ ,” Sara laid out.

Alex didn’t know how to respond at first. “What about me doesn’t say _military_?” she asked. After-all the DEO was part of the military faction.

Sara laughed. “You’re definitely trained, but military is…too cold.”

_Ah_ , Alex realised then. Sara hadn’t seen that side of her. Sara had known her as an awkward, fretting worried sister who could at least handle herself with a gun. “Since you have me so worked out, why don’t you take a wild guess?” she asked, daring Sara then.

The woman laughed, her tongue catching between her teeth briefly before she tilted her head back and thought, “Alright,” she said. “I think you were studying things that got you interested by the government. You were close to an alien so had already worked out most things that your earth was leagues behind, as such…you stood out.”

“Mm?”

“Yep,” Sara nodded. Then, leaning in close to say in a low voice, “But you soon showed your badass side and they realised then that they needed you more than you needed them.”

“Is that so?” she responded, allowing herself to be drawn closer.

“Mmhmm,” Sara nodded, drifting closer. Close enough that Alex could feel the soft exhale tickle against her lips.

She knew that this was a dream, she knew she had fallen asleep not long after crawling into bed, her stomach full of ice cream and pizza –– a terrible mix that amazingly didn’t transfer over into dream world. She knew, somehow, that whatever she chose to do here was only apart of her dream. She could do anything she wanted, guilt-free this time.

After all, there was nothing wrong with a dream one-night stand.

And yet, a part of her hesitated. It didn’t make sense. In the dim lighting, where Sara’s eyes looked almost silver, and her lips only a very pale pink, Alex wanting nothing more than to kiss her. She wanted this, her heart was telling her that she could have this because there were no repercussions in having a fun-fantasy in her dream, but she hesitated.

Maybe it was due to the fact that she would wake up soon and the thought of some unfinished, empty dream hurt more than never doing it. At least she had control in that decision.

“Alex,” Sara whispered, her hand coming to rest against Alex’s cheek.

At the touch, she became aware of each one of Sara’s silver rings. They were a warm, gentle heat as fingertips traced hair over her ear in a deliberate, slow movement as Sara waited for her to make the next move.

Maybe they had more time. Maybe they had enough, Alex let her eyes fall shut she leant forward, her lips parting to kiss Sara. She felt Sara draw in a breath, just before her lips grazed against her, an electric current passing from Sara to Alex.

“ _Captain_ ,” Gideon’s voice called.

Alex snapped awake. For a moment, the sudden awakening felt like she had fallen off the bed, crashing from her dream into reality. But as she looked around, she recognised her room, the sheets around her and the cool breeze coming from the partially opened window. Traffic sounded, distant and brief from the ground far below, and it soothed her back into a near dream state. There was nothing here to scare her, nothing had awoken her except the sudden ending of an almost dream.

Drawing in a breath, her heart eased back to a resting state as she became aware of reality once again. It was still dark, night-time or early morning then. She blinked up at the ceiling, watching the city lights flutter with the movement of her curtains. Her cheek felt cool where Sara’s fingers had been, her hair felt strange across her cheek and not brushed behind her ear, and where Sara’s lips had just grazed against hers, she felt electrified. She lifted her hand to lips, feeling the ghost of Sara’s touch upon her still.

_Should have kissed her sooner_ , Alex thought, allowing her heart to sink in her chest. It wasn’t pained, just…disappointed she thought. Sara had seemed so real; bandaging her arm, she had felt Sara’s muscles, had felt the warmth radiating from her skin as fingers had touched against her cheek. The very fingertips had been calloused, gentle still as they brushed against her ear.

A part of thought she could almost still smell Sara. It didn’t smell like perfume, but…clean. Like scented soap maybe. Fresh out of the shower, _clean_.

Maybe she showered at night.

Alex shook her head, drawing herself away from her delusions. It had been a dream, a strange stream that clearly pulled at Alex’s need to care for others, to be caring for someone now that…now that Maggie was gone. Why was it still so difficult to come to terms with that? All she wanted to do was find where Maggie was living and knock on her door and…and what? She didn’t want to beg, didn’t want to extend the pain of the relationship only to break up two years down the track.

She just…missed her companionship, her love, the way she laughed and smiled and looked at her like she was the only thing that mattered.

Alex turned and looked at the time. She had another two hours before she had to start her morning routine. Closing her eyes, she stopped thinking about Sara and allowed herself to just fall back into her usual dreams. This time about flying whilst arguing with a bank teller about wanting to withdraw muffins. She should buy a muffin for lunch.

When she woke up again Alex went through her morning routine before going to work as usual. She parked her bike in the same spot and nodded at Mandy who didn’t seem pleased by her nightshift, offering only a nod and a brief handover. Whatever had annoyed her, it didn’t seem to be worth noting in the handover. Personal then.

At work, Alex’s recruits were training hard, excited for the simulation at the nearby warehouse. There was an excited murmur of _what_ it might be (hostage? Rescue? Assassination?) and what tactics they would use, they were acting like high school kids rather than young adults, and yet it didn’t annoy Alex. Rather it seemed almost _endearing_ that they were this excited.

“Alright, let’s bring it back. Abdul, how would you signal to Kelly that you could see three men, but only two had weapons.”

Abdul faced Kelly, giving the correct hand movements.

“Good. Alright, let’s get back to work, this should be silent, and please stop mouthing the words, when you’re in tactical gear your mouth will be covered so I need to know that you can do this with just your hands.

In the training room, which could only sit twenty people and was made of desks and DEO issued computers that had no internet connection, the recruits was huddled in groups of twos and threes between desks. Some were sitting down, while others stood in the back of the room. The training room wasn’t the nicest of rooms. Due to location of it, there was no windows bringing in natural light, and the walls were painted a standard white or grey colour as most of the building was.

_Depressing_ Kelly had mentioned once, but what did a government facility need a _pleasant_ training room for. A room was a room. They were learning to kill and once they had made their first kill, Alex knew that they would try to pull out from the contract they had signed. It was hard, and so rather than discourage them from becoming too close, Alex allowed the friendships to flourish. They were a team after-all. Work colleagues who needed to depend on one another to survive.

“This is important,” she said, noticing a few of her recruits were falling slack. “You’re going in blind, and someone’s just behind the wall you’re leaning against for cover. Are you going to them your plan, or do you make it more difficult for them to guess where and what you’re planning next?”

One of the only recruits who was fluent in ASL, Felipe Ramiez, had taken on acting as a coach to a group of those who sought it. Perhaps, because of this, some of the recruits were more proactive in the lesson than others.

Despite all of this, Alex noticed Saunders standing apart with Kelly, signalling snide remarks over to Nilo who appeared to be taking the work seriously from Ramiez. Kelly looked torn between the remarks as Nilo began to notice and start making signals back, even as Ramiez tried to get him to focus on what he was trying to show him.

“You two,” Alex snapped, drawing Nilo and Saunders eyes to her. “Stop fooling around and get back to work.”

“Yes ma’am,” they chorused, though a nasty look passed between them.

After running a few drills, and a few more comments that sounded more than just teasing, she pulled Saunders aside, away from prying ears in the hall of the training rooms. “What’s going on?”

“What?” Saunders responded.

Alex rose a single eyebrow, her mouth pressed into a frown as she waited. She didn’t have to wait long as Saunders added, “ma’am,” with a rushed, embarrassed look. Her eyes had ducked, but there was a nasty curl in her lips.

Alex let it hold a beat longer, using the time to fold her arms and shrug at the recruit. “Well?” she prompted.

“It’s nothing,” Saunders said. Then her shoulders sagged and she inhaled, her face coming up to look at Alex with a raw, hurt expression. Alex almost flinched at the expression, in the past, Saunders had always been so well put together. “Why not me?” she asked of her.

“You’re acting out because you’re jealous,” Alex asked her, lacing her words with a disappointing tone to drive it right into Saunders heart. “Aren’t you a little old to act out because someone else is playing with the toy you want?”

“I know there’ll be other opportunities, but this… _this_ simulation feels important,” Saunders pushed.

She wasn’t wrong. It _was_ important. It would either prove that Alex was right about a lot of the recruits, especially Nilo or it could prove that she was completely wrong about them all. Still, she hadn’t counted on Saunders becoming insecure from the decision. A part of her wanted to ask empathically, but she chose to be direct in her question, lining for the woman’s pride this time, “Why should I have chosen you?”

Hurt flooded across Saunders’ face. “I’m the best!” she snapped. “I run loops around the others, I’m faster, I’m smarter, I’m ––“

“You’re not smarter,” Alex said, shaking her head. “You’re good, I’ll give you that, but your tactics are by the book. You’re expecting people to play in a predictable fashion –– like they’re all going to be human and have learnt from the same books we have. You’d be a damn fine agent in another government field, but that won’t cut it here. You need to start realising that you don’t know everything.”

“And Nilo thinks that way, does he? Like an alien?” Saunders asked, incredulous as Alex’s response.

“Nilo’s tactics are those of someone who isn’t sure of how someone’s going to react. He’s prepared to be flexible against the unpredictable. You’re not.”

“I don’t know how to think like that.”

“You can learn to.”

A brief pause held, enough for Saunders to suck in a breath before she admitted, “I don’t know if I can.” Meeting Alex’s eyes, Saunders allowed her anxiety to be exposed before her. “I’m human, I was raised on a cattle ranch in Texas. All I wanted to do was get out of there and prove that I was better than all those kids. I’ve spent my life trying to be the best _human_. I can’t just…just change the way I think.”

“You’ll have to try,” Alex said. “Otherwise, there are other agencies that you can go to. We can set up a transfer if that’s what you want. But if you choose to stay here, you’ll have to shape up to get command. Prove that your worthy of being in charge.”

She lead Saunders back to the others. Without a beat, Alex had them returning to drills before she handed over a different agent to go over weapon’s tactics for the last few hours of their training. After watching them train for a bit, comfortable with their progress, she went upstairs to take over her shift at the central intelligence and run over the reports with J’onn.

“How are your recruits going?” he asked in greeting.

There, Alex smiled. “Best ones yet,” she admitted. “Don’t let them know it.”

He gave a small smile before returning to the feed they were watching. It had been a quiet few weeks in Central City. Terrorist attacks seemed to be localised with humans and therefor a different department’s problem. Given the governments stance on a stronger gun control as alien weapons seeped into the market, shootings weren’t as much as a problem as they had once been for North America.

Still, alien tech reached into the market one way or another. Robberies happened, people died and Kara took the responsibility even if there was no way she could get there in time. It was hard. Alex had spent years separating her feelings from what she could help and what she couldn’t. The truth was, Kara had an empathy that far proceeded her own and J’onn’s and it was her single greatest quality, as well as her biggest flaw. One day, Alex worried, that it would eat her alive and she could become the world biggest threat; worse than her red kryptonite apathy.

It seemed that night, Kara was a step closer.

They heard the gun fire happen, too fast for Supergirl to rush in. They also heard the sound of a broken arm or leg. Kara probably hadn’t even meant to do it, maybe she had been trying to wrestle the weapon away from burglar and grabbed too tightly. Then they heard Kara talking to someone, a boy? Followed by the sound of a grown man crying –– his father.

Alex and J’onn listened, quiet. These were the ones they were quiet with. There was no direction to give, no advice that Kara didn’t already know and she didn’t need another voice in her ear telling her what she knew she had to do.

“I’m going to take him to Central Hospital, okay? I’m going to take him there and make sure he gets cared for,” Supergirl told the boy’s father, before the sound changed to wind and Alex knew she was flying. Then she was in the hospital, explaining what happened to ER doctors and nurses on shift. It was another ten minutes before she returned to the DEO.

“I took him to the hospital,” Kara said as she landed on the sky-deck. There was smear of blood on her shoulder from where the person had bled. The shopkeeper’s son. “He was sixteen. He was just overlooking it while his father ducked out to the toilet. And then…”

And then the burglar had come in and the kid got frightened, became frozen or perhaps moved too fast for the shotgun underneath the till. Or perhaps the burglar didn’t care and had shot him point blank because it was easy. Alex knew every story there was to tell.

Kara dropped what had once been an alien gun and was now a crumpled ball the side of her fist. “Sorry,” she said, sounding as though she wasn’t. “I know Wynn needs them in one piece to run…to run through the system,” Kara dropped her head, her eyes filling with tears. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

There, Alex stepped forward, dropping away from her role as Agent Danvers into just Alex, and wrapped her arms around Kara. The world became small as she found herself unable to tell Kara that it would get better, because it wouldn’t, that the boy would be fine, because there was no way to know, and Kara didn’t need any lies. There would be another victim that Kara couldn’t save down the track, another person who shot a civilian. It would always happen.

“Take her home,” J’onn said. Alex took Kara home and made them both a hot chocolate. A sitcom show from when they were kids was placed on, and with their drinks, they sat on the couch and listened to a laugh track play that felt like white noise. Kara tried not to cry, Alex tried not to say something hollow and falsely reassuring as she stayed by her side.

Then, as an episode ended and the credits played, Kara whispered, “I can’t save them all. I want to, but ––“

“You can’t anticipate every danger,” Alex said. “No one can. You did your best, and because of you, that boy has a chance of living he might not have had otherwise.”

Kara nodded, but her brow was pinched and she was getting closer to shutting down and telling Alex to go away. But Alex wasn’t going to go away. She was going to tuck Kara in bed, turn the television off and sleep on the couch with a spare pillow and blanket. Just in case Kara needed her.

Because that’s what sisters did.

The truth was, Alex didn’t know what else to do. So she stayed, just in case she was needed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex feared for Kara's heart.

She had just fallen asleep on Kara’s couch when she found herself standing in a forest. An owl sung out nearby, towards her left. From behind her, close enough that she could see her shadow dancing, there was the soft crackle of a campfire behind her.

Alex felt her body hum as she looked up to the cloudless night, and found herself staring up at the brightest, clearest depiction of space she’d witness with the naked-eye before. It was magnificent, like she could just fall off the Earth and begin floating in space. Even the world seemed quieter somehow, and yet louder with the sounds of insects and wildlife.

Behind her, she heard the rustling of someone moving, walking across the debris of the forest floor before Sara came to stand beside her.

“Pretty amazing, huh?” she said.

“It is,” Alex agreed. She angled her head to Sara, though her eyes didn’t look away from the sky as she told her, “As a kid I had this telescope. I used to look through it for hours. But this…this is so much more. The stars are different, grander. Look at how full the Milky Way looks, you can’t get it that clear without telescope. You can even see a shimmer of green near Cassiopeia.”

“Nerd,” Sara teased.

Still, Alex responded by nodding, ducking her eyes to stare not at Sara’s eyes, but down to her own hands. “I was. I am. I used to try not to be, but…” she thought back to middle school, to high school and everything that happened. Of the boy who had been the first person she felt comfortable being herself with andwho shared with her all of outer-space.“Eventually I stopped pretending,” she whispered, her heart giving out a pang as she thought of him again, and his lost adulthood –– it only served to remind her of the boy from last night.

J’onn had messaged her before she fell asleep. The boy had died in operation, ultimately from mass blood loss. There was nothing Kara could have done, nothing to prevent it from happening and yet Alex knew that if she told Kara that, her sister would still think that she should have flown faster, should have dipped lower on the roads so that she had been closer. Should have done of one a thousand things that couldn’t have changed that moment from happening.

And even if they could have, she didn’t know what was to happen. Who knows what else could have happened instead.

“You okay?” Sara asked.

“Just a work thing,” she lied.

Sara nodded, a look on her face which said she didn’t believe her for a second.

Alex eased as no follow-ups or call-outs came. Sara was allowing her to choose if and when she’d speak about it. It was different to what she was used to her from the women in her life. Kara would have hounded relentlessly for an answer so that she could be a part of it. Maggie would have made some dry, off-beat, “fine, keep it to yourself” comment. Her mother…her mother would have frowned in a tight line, waiting for Alex to give in.

But the way Sara bobbed her head, as if that had finished the conversation, no questions asked. That was different. Nice, even.

In the absence of the question, a quiet settled between her and Sara, filled with only the sound of the nocturnal animals and the soft crackle of the camp fire thriving near them. Alex tore her eyes away from the stars –– cast in a different arrangement from being somewhere in history, in another universe, different to the stars she knew and loved –– to turn to look behind her. Lying the ground, Amaya and Ray Palmer were fast asleep, their breaths soft and shallow, utterly undisturbed by Sara and Alex.

She hadn’t come to know either of them, except by name. Amaya she knew to have strange magical powers that didn’t make sense, and Ray Palmer to shrink to the size of a fly, despite his name. Nonetheless, she had considered them to be good people on the grounds that you’d need to be, to sacrifice your life and family to travel through space and time and save all of history, wherever that called for.

She, at least, worked near her home for the most part, and no matter what, Kara and her were only ever a phone call away.

No-one else of the team was there, so it didn’t seem like a planned overnight camping trip. There was no gear, either, though it looked as though someone, probably Ray, had attempted to build a lean-to shelter that had collapsed upon itself.

“What happened to the Waverider?”

Sara shook her head, a faint smile on her mouth. “Small mishap. Took a little damage, it’ll be back in no time.”

“Ah,” Alex responded. “No hotels nearby?” She noticed then that Sara was dressed in long, red skirts, her hair pinned back from her face in a modest loop at the back of her head. Near the campfire she could see two bonnets discarded on the ground. “Or taverns?”

Sara gave her a _don’t-get-me-started_ look, but the burn mark was faint and the bruise on her chin was healing up. There didn’t look to be anything new to worry about, either. “Believe it or not, I’m more used to sleeping rough than I am in a bed.”

“Because you used to sleep in a mountain, like some sort of bear?”

Sara gave her a funny look. “Well, yes,” she said, before shaking her head. “But I meant that my dad used to take my sister and I camping when we were kids. It wasn’t often, but…I think he wanted to make sure we knew how to pitch a tent, start a fire…just in case, you know? It was like a Lance summer tradition for a while.”

Alex nodded, not even able to picture a tiny Sara camping. But trying to consider it brought back her own memories of camping. “Before my father…” she paused, not sure how to place it. Died? He hadn’t been dead, even if she believed he had. Was kidnapped? Disappeared? “Went missing,” she chose to say, “he used to take my mother and I camping. We used to go fishing and when Kara came along, she was…she was _horrified_ by this.” That had been a long forgotten memory. Kara with golden bangs that fell over her eyes, tears welling up as she watched her father explain how to unhook the fish. “She used to cry when she saw the hooks in their mouth, so my father would throw them back in the river. I used to get so angry because of her,” Alex shook her head, biting her lip. “I thought she was ruining the family trip, but she wasn’t. She just…didn’t understand what we were doing. It seemed so barbaric to her.”

“Sisters can be a pain in the ass.” Sara sighed then, the sound soft and aching in Alex’s heart.

“You must love her a lot.”

Sara’s face twisted, even in the dim light she could see her jaw clench, the way her chest fell in the exhale of long-held breath.

For a moment Alex wished she could swallow back the words and pretend they were never said. To think of what would happen if Kara died almost made her heart stop. For it to be Sara’s reality made her painfully aware of how fast it could happen. How many times had her sister almost died? How many times had she dragged Kara to the sun bed or pulled her from some crater, unsure if she was even breathing?

Sara spoke then, unveiling something far more intimate than she expected, “We did a lot of mean things to each other. Usual crap that sisters do, but…” and then, Sara sighed, “I stole her boyfriend,” her nose scrunched, “well, not stole, he was still with her. I don’t think she even realised until we went missing, that we were…”

There Alex lips parted, a thousand questions rising, before she pressed her mouth shut to listen. This wasn’t the time to ask.

“I think it took me almost dying the first time to realise how much I really loved her,” Sara said. Her shoulders were tense, holding back the depth of loneliness and regret in those words. It seemed almost unbearable.

Alex stared at the ground. In her peripheral vision she could see Sara’s hand, still covered in assortment of silver rings. She wanted to reach out and hold it, to feel Sara’s fingers between hers and let her know that she wasn’t alone.

“That was…Oliver, wasn’t it?” Alex asked.

Sara smiled at her, “Yeah, he was an ass too, back then. But I was a kid, and Oliver had wanted to pay me attention, which seemed like everything back then. I don’t think that’s why I did it, though. I think I was just young and stupid and liked the idea of someone wanting me over Laurel. I didn’t care if it hurt her at the time, didn’t care that it didn’t make sense either. But now I couldn’t imagine doing anything like that, least of all to Laurel. Sometimes I just wish…”

“You’re stupid as a kid. Everyone is.” Alex said. She had wished Kara away a hundred times over. Hoping that she’d become someone else’s problem. Hoping even that she’d just…disappear. Not just die, but…fly away. She couldn’t place the exact moment that had all shifted, but the process had been a slow and gradual feeling once she had come to terms with her father’s apparent death at the time. The final piece being in high school, after their friend had been murdered.

“Well, I need a beer, now,” Sara said.

Alex looked up and smiled at her. “Next time I’ll have to dream about a bar.”

Sara turned to look at her, a wry grin on her face, “There’s gonna be a next time, is there?”

“Well I can hardly help it,” Alex said, “I don’t know why I keep coming back…” she trailed off, but the unsaid words hanging between them, _to you_. Even in her dreams she was awkward as ever around Sara. It was only a matter of time before Sara would ask her how she was and she would respond two octaves higher with, _I’m fine! Really!_

“Maybe you’re searching for something across time and space,” Sara offered in way of teasing. “New fashion tips? I can tell you the latest in puritan fashion.”

“That must be it. Puritan fashion is definitely missing from my wardrobe,” she said, drawing a short laugh from Sara. Awkward as she was with Sara, there was something magnetic, it didn’t feel like infatuation, not like it had with Maggie, but…something else. Something familiar and a little bit new.

Drawing in a breath of cool night air, she said neither to Sara nor really to herself, “Whatever it is, I’m certainly not in Kansas anymore.”

“Well _, Dorothy_ ,” Sara said. “That’s not entirely true…”

“Is that so?” Alex turned to face her, sensing a story. She wasn’t disappointed as Sara began telling her about where they landed and how the anachronism began with what had seemed to be just a simple cat, which began Alex’s story about Kara and Streaky, leading to another story, and then another. Through-out the conversation, Alex found herself sinking into the dream, allowing the quips and jokes to drift back and forth, as she pretended that, for a time, there wasn’t something big and awful she had to tell Kara. It was a dream, after-all, even if it seemed too normal, too natural to be a dream. What she needed from this was it to be far away from the real world.

So it was.

“…and then of course I was to be burned at the stake for ‘corrupting’ their women.”

“Of course,” Alex said. “Women enjoying sex with each other? Blasphemy.”

Sara shrugged, before laughing. They had long since made their way to nearby the riverside to where an old, petrified tree had fallen over. Sitting upon it, side by side, over the course of the conversation, they had drawn closer until their knees were touching. Alex could feel the coarse material of the dress against her leg move higher as Sara turned to face her.

“Maybe it may have been a little bit cruel,” Sara said, looking mischievous, “I mean, they’ll probably never have sex like that again.” With that Sara’s face loosened to an almost perfect, empathic expression, before a smirk caught at the edge.

Alex laughed, “Wow! You are _so_ arrogant _,”_ she said.

“Well you’re meant to be the _master_ of interrogation. Was I lying?” She asked. “Or do you need a demonstration?”

Alex snapped her jaw tight, her cheeks becoming hot and red. Taking a breath, she gave a small hum and looked at Sara, “I think I have plenty of experience to say, that you would certainly be memorable to them.”

“ _Ouch_ ,” Sara laughed. “Well, Danvers, I’ll have you know that I perform much, _much_ better sober.”

“Is that so?”

It was still night and the stars and moon didn’t seem to have moved so there was no way to know how much time had passed –– it almost seemed that the whole world had stopped moving to allow them this space. Alex wondered how much time they had left, how much time there could be if she considered Sara’s tease.

Alex could feel Sara’s hand on hers then. It began as a gentle brush, before settling down atop of her fingers in a careful, deliberate movement. Their fingers laced and once again, Alex could feel the warmth of the silver rings, the callouses on her Sara’s hand as she slid her thumb over the back of her hand.

“This is just a dream,” she told Sara.

“The thing about dreams, is that they’re often about what you desire.”

“Or fear,” Alex added.

“Are you afraid of me, Danvers?” Sara said, and Alex watched the way her mouth and tongue moved over the words, the way she drew out her name into two, clear syllables.

“Not a chance,” Alex answered, her voice soft. Sara’s lips in the moonlight still seemed impossibly pink, soft.

Sara’s smirk melted on her face into absolute desire, giving Alex a look that dared her to make the first move.

Alex’s heart pounded as she leant forward, feeling Sara’s hand come to slip over her neck and cup under her jawline as she was brought closer.

“ _Alex_ ––“ came a whisper, like someone was yelling from far away. Alex withdrew, just before she met Sara’s lips, turning around to where the voice had sounded. There was no one there, but Alex, knew that voice anywhere, in any time.

“Kara?” she answered.

“Kara?!” Sara flinched.

“ALEX!” Kara’s voice called, right in front of her.

Alex opened her eyes, blinking up at the morning light, shadowed by sister’s face. Kara’s face was furrowed, a pout on her lips. It was somewhere between frustrated and worried for her. Despite that Kara shared no genes with herself, she wore the exact same expression their mother often used when either of them had tried to get out of a school event.

“Wha…?” Alex questioned, sitting up.

“Your alarm has being going off for last ten minutes. Can’t you hear it?”

Sitting up, Alex pulled out her vibrating phone and looked at it. “Oh no,” she said. Kara lived further from the DEO than her apartment. She was running late. It was only by ten minutes, but it was _late_. “Crap,” she said, grabbing her work clothes and running for Kara’s bathroom where muffled swearing came behind the closed door.

Another five minutes later and she was trying to run a comb through her hair and brush her teeth at the same time. If everything went well, she’d be work right on time, which was still late by usual Alex Danvers time, but it’ll have to do.

“I’ve never seen you sleep so heavily in your life,” Kara said.

Alex nodded, double-checking she had her phone and keys, “Yeah, it was a pretty vivid dream,” she said, her brow furrowing as though about it. Most dreams felt like water trickling through her hands, gone by the time she awoke. But this dream had held as strongly in her memories as the other two Sara dreams had. Like it was something that had happened only last week.

She thought of the passed conversations, the way Sara’s fingers brushed against her skin and drawn her closer like Alex was the purest water to a parched Sara.

Alex shook her head, she didn’t have time to consider what that meant. She couldn’t go into logistics of anything, and the idea that she was somehow developing feelings over an _idea_ of Sara seemed to be an obvious transference of her emotions for Maggie.

And yet…that didn’t feel right, either.

That hunger for Sara didn’t feel the same way as it had for Maggie.

She’d just finished tugging on her boots, with minutes to spares, placing a stopper in her trail of thoughts, when she gave Kara a glance over. Her sister was dressed in her sunshine-yellow dress with black low-heeled shoes. “Working today?” she asked.

Kara nodded. There was a furrow between her eyebrows, and her lips were pinched, an expression Alex was familiar with and often referred to as Kara’s ‘serious’ face.

“I’ll see you tonight,” Kara said, turning around to fix a pin in her hair in her bedroom mirror.

“Sounds good. We’ll get proper food, hey?”

“Sure,” Kara nodded, and then she was leading them both out of the door, grabbing her handbag with her. She didn’t seem as upset as she had last night, but there was deep tension in her that certainly wasn’t as sunny as the yellow dress.

Alex was halfway to work, exiting off the motorway when she realised that she hadn’t told Kara what happened to the boy. _Damn it_. She had wanted to get up earlier to discuss it with her, break the news gently to give Kara the opportunity to go through those emotions. Now, she’d would have to tell Kara that evening and just hope that no one broke the news to her first.

Three-quarters through her day and Alex found herself spacing out as she continued to worry about Kara. “Agent Danvers?” Kelly Anderson asked. Her recruits were midway through practicing placing on masks as quickly and efficiently as they could as soon as Alex called the word. It was boring, dredging work, but Alex needed the movement to be a fast muscle reflective as soon as something happened. When Nilo had requested _why_ they needed to be at it for an hour, she had snapped back that if they couldn’t do it right now, what good was it when a toxic gas was thrown into a room and they had _seconds_ to get a mask on before they were poisoned. One screw-up and they could die.

That’s what it felt like all the time. Teaching them to have muscle memories. To punch first, to drag masks on, to block an incoming attack. To react rather then wait, because that moment of waiting could get them killed.

Only with guns did she teach them to wait first. Finger off the trigger, weapon straight. You could remove a mask, but you couldn’t remove the impact of a bullet.

“Yes, Anderson?” Alex said, pointing to the recruit.

“Where will the simulation be?”

“In the warehouse district. Myself and a few others will be setting it up. You’ll be given the schematics of the building an hour before and strict orders from me in what you need to do.” Vasquez and Winn being the main officers she had chosen to help her set it up. The simulation was meant to be a challenge and teach them a few hard lessons that they won’t learn until they’re in the field, which by then would be too late for them. Better to shake them up early on.

“I thought we were meant to be given it a week before?” Nilo asked.

“Plans changed, the simulation will be on Monday. We had to move it up.”

“Why?”

“That’s classified,” Alex said, and was satisfied when a collective groan chorused from her recruits. Since the beginning, she had found it amusing to use the word _classified_ for anything remotely sensitive that would be hinted at. The truth was that the warehouse they had chosen would be used to run a different simulation for a seperate reason entirely in the following week. It wasn’t _classified_ per se, but need to know.

However, there was another set of recruits being trained by a few other operatives who would be partaking in her recruits simulation. They would be ears and eyes for training in the field, but the team didn’t know that yet. They knew there was another group of recruits, from the comms section, but weren’t quite aware of what was to follow. Not yet, anyway. Eventually, Alex hoped for them to integrate smoothly into the DEO and respect the different factions, but such a hope was a wistful dream at best.

“Masks!” she barked and her recruits grabbed for them, tugging them over their hair and face. They were learning. Even her slowest recruit was shaping up to have potential in the field.

The rest of the day shaped up to be like every other day, she worked the recruits, met up with J’onn to go over reports, and as it was a relaxed day, Supergirl wasn’t called in, though there were still Ops to oversee and check in. The day seemed to be normal, for the most part, dull even, but Alex still dreaded meeting up with Kara. So when she opened her door and saw her sister’s posture, head down, arms folded as she paced in the small area, Alex knew that she had been too late.

“Kara?” she asked, setting the groceries she’d bought for dinner, down on top of the countertop before stepping closer to her sister.

Her sister lifted her chin to stare through the framed lenses. Alex could see that her eyes were flooded with tears as she tore off her glasses and just stared, unblinking.“Did you know?” she asked, her voice cracking.

“I did,” Alex answered. “I…I wanted to tell you in person.”

Kara exhaled and then looked like she wanted to punch something, before some look of defeat hit her. She wanted to be angry at someone, but there was no one left to be angry at. “He was only _sixteen_ , Alex. His dad will live with the guilt of going to the toilet for _five minutes_ for the rest of his life!”

Alex swallowed the words she had to say, pained that she didn’t know how to comfort her sister. “It was a tragedy,” she said. “And it’s unfair, but there’s nothing that can be done to save him.”

“It was more than that, and yet it keeps happening,” Kara snapped, “People keep dying, people keep getting shot and what we do it’s-It’s not enough! There has to be something that we can _do_. People shouldn’t be dying from-from _alien technology_. It just shouldn’t happen. It just…shouldn’t,” Kara said, all eloquence gone as she stood, frustrated and broken. “I should have been faster, I need to get faster, and stronger and…and _better,_ ” she ended, her voice hitching with guilt.

“Kara,” Alex whispered. “There was _nothing_ you could have done. You can’t always be there, you can’t save everyone.”

“But ––“ and Alex could see the naive hope that had braved through everything that came before. “I should be able to,” she whispered.

“No,” Alex said, closeting the distance to draw her sister into a close hug. Even there, Kara felt tense as if part of her wanted to rip away. Alex withdrew. “It’s not your responsibility. No one should have that responsibility to save everyone. Not even Supergirl.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Kara admitted to her. Her words sounding hoarse as if she was about to cry. Alex didn’t know how to fix how it. Alcohol wouldn’t make this better, ice cream couldn’t. This was a broken heart that Alex didn’t know how to fix, even time would never heal it. Kara needed to do something. She wanted to save someone, but she was too afraid to. She needed _something_. Someone who understood.

_Clark_ , Alex thought and promised herself that she would get in contact with Kara’s cousin that night. If anyone would be able to help, it would be him. After-all, it was only a quick text message now that she had him as a contact in case the worst case scenario were to happen.

Kara seemed to calm down after cooking, her expression going from pained to determined as she considered other options to making a difference. There was also something therapeutic about chopping peppers, Alex thought. By the time they had finished the bowl of cooked pasta and had watched a movie, Kara had steadied her emotion, though she still gave a hollow look to the world around her, one that Alex feared would only grow worse.

“I know what I’m going to do,” she said as Alex took the empty bowls of spaghetti from her. “I’m going to do an article about what happened.”

Alex nodded her head, “That sounds like a good idea.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

Alex paused, looking at Kara. “I said it was a good idea,” she replied, incase Kara had misheard. But her sister just frowned, adjusting her glasses.

“No, you used your ‘if that’s what you want to do’ condescending voice. It’s _Mum’s_ voice.” _Ouch_. Alex felt the nasty stab from that comment, knowing that it wasn’t too far from the truth.

“It’s just…” Alex found herself saying, and then it was too late to take back the words. “Nothing changes, Kara. People don’t change their stance on gun control. There have been so many _horrific_ massacres with both alien and human technology and the arguments always end the same two ways,” she held up one finger, “if the victim had a gun they would have been able to protect themselves,” then she held up her second finger and said, “that the person who did the massacre had a mental health problem and that nothing could have prevented it.”

“But the president has done so much,” Kara argued.

“She has, and using alien technology as a way to regulate guns was a genius idea on her part. Only certain high ranking government officials are allowed alien technology. Everyone else must surrender any found weapon to the local police station, who will then give it to the FBI who returns it to us. But that still relies on people being honest, and there are other weapons that can be found, other technologies and people can still break apart something advanced and replicate it, then claiming it as their own –– therefor, it’s no longer alien tech.”

“So…you think it’s pointless then?”

Alex sighed, “No, I think that you should report the truth and facts and run it by James. He’ll make the decision at the end of the day.”

“Maybe Lena will help.”

At the mention of Lena, Alex found herself remembering something Maggie said a while ago to her, a soft joke that always made her think better of Lena. “That sounds like a good idea,” Alex told her sister, this time with honesty; from it, a small, pleased smile pulled at her sister’s lips.

Maybe Alex’s fears were unfair. This was Supergirl and even Mon-El’s leaving hadn’t been able to break through her hope.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sara has a way with her hands that makes her touch feel like devotion.

She didn’t dream of the Waverider, or of the forest this time, rather she dreamt of an uneven, wooden floor, mud and stone made the walls with a roof made of wooden slats with brush stuffed between, acting as a form of insulation. There were spiderwebs in the corner of the cottage and dust layered over the walls. But the floor looked as though there had been an effort to sweep outmost of the dirt. Outside, thunder cracked and inside, fire crackled as it had the night before, drifting a pleasant smell of redwood that almost masked the smell of mildew dampness coming from the roof. 

Alex took a seat beside where Sara was, nudging the boot peaking out from the brown cloak with her own, bare toes. They were nice, sturdy boots, low-clipped heel with support incase Sara might need to break into a run. They didn’t appear to be _of the era_ , but Alex was neither a fashion nor history expert.

“I’m awake,” Sara murmured in response to the nudge, lifting her head from her folded arms to give Alex a sleepy smile. “Nice shirt.” It _was_ a nice shirt and Alex couldn’t tell if she was being teased or flirted with.

“Why aren’t you in the bed?” Alex asked, nodding to where Ray and Amaya were. There was room enough for a third person, even if the bed’s mattress was probably the source of the mildew smell.

Sara looked up at her, her eyes lit from the dancing fire. They appeared almost indigo, like dawn just before the sky turned red and gold. “Ray’s a cuddler,” she said. “Very tight squeezer.”

“Ah, of course. Can’t have that.”

Sara propped her head onto one hand, looking into her eyes as if trying to decide if she should say something. Alex waited, but whatever words Sara had thought of saying, slipped away, leaving the room to be filled with only the sound of the fire, the distant thunder and a soft sigh as Alex drew her knees to her chest.

There was a decent sized fire in the hearth, but it did little against the draft that seeped from the large wooden door. Perhaps the cold was in part due to her wearing her summer pyjamas: shorts and a blue cotton tee that had a cartoon cat asleep in a curled ball. It had been a present from Kara two years ago and Alex wore it when the weather was as balmy as it had been in National City. She regretted it now.

“Cold?” Sara questioned.

Alex nodded. “It’s summer in National City,” she explained. The fire was too hot to ease any closer, but her back was freezing, shuddering with the winter air.

“Come here,” Sara said, reaching out to curl an arm around her waist. Then, all at once Alex was lying down, pressed up against Sara, with a brown, winter cloak being thrown over the both of them. The heavy coat had been warmed by the fire and had trapped Sara’s body heat inside of it. Despite its comfort, Alex couldn’t help but notice uneven wood on her body. _How did Sara sleep?_

“You get used to it,” Sara answered the unspoken thought. Or perhaps in response to Alex’s attempt at subtle wriggling to find some comfort on the old, weathered floor. She stopped moving and drew out a low breath. She had slept in upright car seats and cramped airplanes, she could deal with a hard floor.

Sara pressed closer to her and Alex’s body shook for a few moments from the cold and then settled, warming against the touch.

She hadn’t noticed it before, what with her being hidden under the cloak, but it felt as though Sara was only wearing a petticoat. Next to the fire, in the corner of the room was a set of clothes that had been laid out on some makeshift wooden clothes hanger that Alex had missed before as she had rounded her eyes over the room. Perhaps she’d been wrong before and the source of the smell hadn’t been the mattress.

“Better?” Sara asked.

“Yes,” Alex responded. Her heart was thudding the same way it had in that first night, when she awoke to Sara’s arm slipping around her in the morning. She felt almost panicked by the touch, like any wrong movement and it would leave her. She didn’t know what to do, except stay very, very still. Or run. Maybe she should run?

Had it been this difficult with Maggie?

“Relax, Alex. I don’t bite.”

Alex felt a bubble of laughter rise in her chest, “That’s not even a little bit true.”

Sara’s forehead pressed against her shoulder, a hum of amusement vibrating from her chest. “I suppose not,” she whispered, her voice low and warm, bringing a new shiver down Alex’s back. “But in my defence, you responded well.” Then, Sara’s fingers were slipping from her belly to her waist, her head lifting up so her lips were near Alex’s ear as she asked, “I suppose that is a good leeway as any to what I’ve been wanting to do since the first time you appeared on my ship.”

“Which is?” Alex said both to prompt and request.

In answer to it, Sara’s lips pressed over the exposed skin of her throat, then up to her jaw, pulling Alex closer so as to nip at the flesh.

Alex gasped, closing her eyes as she experienced, not for the first time, the way Sara seemed to know how much pressure her teeth needed to apply to have hedonistic warmth flood her sense. It caught her by surprise as a moan was swiftly elicited and then hushed as she held it back from escaping any further.

Challenged by it, Sara kissed up her throat, hand clutching Alex’s hip still to better angle her mouth and draw her mouth over Alex jawline with such gentleness and restraint that Alex shivered, tense for the touch to return to how it had been that she almost, _almost_ , whimpered.

Alex’s heart seemed to thud louder as she felt Sara’s thigh slip between hers and –– with deliberate pressure –– slid until it was rubbing up against her pyjamas shorts.

Alex rolled her hips and felt a tremble slip down her spine and a high, ache rising in her chest. It was as though some part of her that had felt missing for a while, something more than arousal, like she found a connection rather than some drunk stupor. With it, an old fight eased inside of her chest.

Right then, her heart didn’t feel as though it was _missing_ someone, it felt excited, thudding loud and awaiting the next moment as each second flooded into another and another moment more consuming than the last. It was then, as Alex had let all thought and worry slip away, that Sara’s hand slipped from her waist and pushed at the waistband of her blue shorts.

Alex could hear the crackle of fire, the thundering storm outside that bore a warning to what was happening, but the world seemed so small, so complete in that moment that she ignored whatever foreshadowing it bore and allowed herself to sink into Sara’s touch, letting her breath hitch as Sara’s fingers edge closer: not there, not quite, but almost.

She wanted to ask for more, but her teeth held over her bottom lip, swallowing the words from escaping. _Please_ , she held back; _more,_ her voice threatened to say.

Alex pushed back against Sara’s hand, into the fingers that had slipped between her exposed thighs and drew a teasing, light stroke against her. Then another, this time more deliberate in its teasing as Sara’s middle finger bumped over her clit. It wasn’t enough and a hushed, inarticulate plead slip from her then, but Sara didn’t laugh at her as she expected, there was an intensity to her touch, a carefulness in the way she orchestrated her hands over her body that felt almost like a _devotion._

Alex pulled away, turning around to face Sara and drew her into a deep kiss, then another and another as she tried to equal the playing field and partake in whatever Sara had tried to do. Drawing her own hands across the woman’s body, pulling her hips close, kissing across her jawline and neck and shoulder in a tempo of her own worship.

_This_ , Alex felt as her mouth pressed against Sara’s, their tongues slipping over the other, catching lips between teeth in a tease of pain, this, as her heart race and thunder became louder outside, was exactly how her dream was meant to be. This was the dream she had been chasing.

And then Sara paused, her body going still as she listened at the same time as Alex heard a strange noise. They drew apart, ears pricked for another noise.

They waited, listening to the sound of boots on foliage, just outside the door.

Sara slipped away from her as she turned to face the door and Alex was dropped back into the inky darkness, until the sound of distant traffic had her open her eyes to her bedroom ceiling.

Sara was gone, Alex realised as she eased her chest. And she was awake, lying in her own bed.

Her lips felt electric, alight with the echoes of her dream, her body feeling as if she could feel each heartbeat pulse from heat to toes. Maybe it was focused somewhere in-between the two, but it certainly felt like she could feel the rush of blood moving around her body.

_In the dark, once again_ , Alex thought as she sat up. She ran a hand through her hair. The world had cooled down to a reasonable temperature, almost chill to how she had fallen asleep. Had that been the cold she felt in the dream? 

It had to be a dream, she thought. How else could she be appearing across an entirely new universe, _thirty_ - _two_ universes if Cisco’s science was right, not to mention that Sara had been randomly in another time. It didn’t make any sense. And yet, what about there being another universe made _any_ sense? Metahumans and magic, people had died and been resurrected. It was the stuff of science-fiction.

Not to mention that her sister was an alien. So the fiction part of that had long-since finalised since Kara had appeared in her life. Still, the idea that she was finding Sara through another universe, in another time, felt like it was stretching that fiction pretty far, and maybe it was time to gather some answers about it. Just, not right now, she decided, looking at the time and deciding that she deserved to slip in the extra three hours of sleep remaining.

The next day, Alex made the decision to ask J’onn. After all, if anyone would know, it would be him or Kara and Kara wasn’t in a place to have any questions like that asked.

Her sister’s mood had dropped to becoming sullen, her voice short and hollow as she considered her direction in life as ultimately not being enough –– no matter what others said.

As Kara flew around, with a new determination, Alex worked up the courage to ask him about her dream. “So,” she began and J’onn’s eyes went to hers, a raised eyebrow in place as he waited for her to ask, “do you know anything about…like…telepathy across…universes?”

J’onn paused, a quiet settling over him as he considered her question. “Telepathy at its best has a limit to how far it extends. I’ve never known any creature to reach across to another world, let alone a universe.”

“What about technology?” she asked, “there must be something that crosses universes.”

“I’ve heard of dimension crossing, but that’s a matter of space and time rather than distance,” he admitted. “That’s not to say that universe-telepathy doesn’t exist.”

“Thanks J’onn.”

Alex didn’t allow her emotion to drift too far, choosing instead to focus on the current, important issues rather than if she was or was not dreaming about Sara. After-all, in a few days, her recruits would be going into their simulation. Winn had created the tech, and Vasquez and a few others including herself had set up the warehouse. She’d already taken a few volunteers for the enemy that’d be going up against them.

The recruits were excited, even Saunders was starting to show excitement, though her distaste towards Nilo hadn’t diminished at all, much to Alex’s regret. Nilo was starting to distrust her too, antagonising where it didn’t warrant it, and sometimes where it felt like it did. Not that Alex stood for it either way. “You’re a team,” she snapped at them both once the final straw of her patience had broke. “If you can’t have each other’s back despite whatever _this_ is, you’re out. I don’t care how good either of you are.” Both of them had hushed down after that, though Alex got the feeling that they didn’t quite believe her.

Despite all that, Alex found herself anticipating her dreams, almost _hoping_ to see Sara. But that night, Sara didn’t appear. In fact, Alex dreams were dull and work orientated, running over the upcoming simulation, thanks to the Tetris effect and anxiety. The truth was, if this failed she knew J’onn wouldn’t allow another one to happen, and if her recruits failed, well that was just another thing entirely.

But as the day crept closer, she found herself no less anxious, and only more so as Sara never reoccured. Was it over, she wondered? The shared dream –– if it was even that –– was gone in a single moment. Had something happened to Sara, or had it just been over because that was it, whatever connected them was gone.

There was no known answer and short of trying to explain to Kara why she needed to get in touch with the Legends (which if the dream wasn’t true, seemed like an excessively pointless thing to do) there didn’t seem much that she could do except focus on work. So she focused on her work.

“Here are the schematics,” she said to Nilo, laying out the entrances and exits of the warehouse, as well as the different floors and individual rooms, all of which were just a little bit outdated and omitted a few key details. “If I were you, I would case the perimeter around here and move in from this entrance,” she said. Nilo nodded, eyeing every inch of the map.

“Do we know how many have set up inside?”

Alex shook her head. “You should expect at least ten on each floor.” This was a lie, there were a fair amount of volunteers she had pulled on their day off, only too happy to tease the overeager recruits. But that was the point of the mission. She wanted to see what happened when they went in essentially blind. It would have been better if she could give the schematics a week earlier and let the plans be all for nought, but J’onn had pointed out to her that they were more than half way through their training. This was more than enough to prepare them.

Her recruits were dressed up in tactical gear, the weapons being re-modified laser guns. To make it more real, Winn had equipped the tactical outfits with technology that would read any “gun shot” from the modified laser gun as an electroshock through the limb. It wouldn’t be enough to even remotely cause damage, but certainly enough to spark discomfort and temporary cause the limb to feel unsteady.

“If you get shot in the leg, you will feel it and you will not be able to move your leg, if you get shot in the arm, you will feel it and moving it will not be fun. If you get shot in the chest or head, it is game over. You are out.” Actual shot to either section wouldn’t cause any electrical shock, rather the helmet or chest plate would change to being a bright yellow. “We can read where you’ve been hit so cheating the game is not optional. These are the rules, I don’t care if you heard of few stories of chest wounds and head shots being survived, you are _gone._ Understood?”

“Yes ma’am,” came the chorus, but she saw Kelly’s lips purse with an unsaid argument rising in her chest.

“Now, the most important thing I will say is that you need to treat this as if it’s a real mission. This isn’t a game, this is a test and you will be marked on how you respond to the situation.”

“What’s the mission?” Nilo asked.

“To retake this classified document,” Alex lifted up a thick binder, their favourite word _classified_ stamped in red across it, “and do _not_ take your time reading it. Check if it’s the correct document, it should say For Your Eyes Only and read that’s for the United States of America. This has intel in it that we don’t want in enemy hands, so be quick about it.”

Her recruits all gave her a serious nod, but she could see the sparked interest in their eyes. _What_ exactly, was in the document? The answer to that was simple: there was nothing in the document except some old, out of date intel from the early twentieth century that she had dredged up and ran through with J’onn to have cleared, which carried its own point. It was a simulation, that, unlike capture the flag and paintball she had begun with, would carry a more realistic edge to it.

“Alright. You have four hours once you get in there to find the document and bring it back, I expect it to be done in less than two. I’ll give you another fifty to work out a plan. Got it?”

Her recruits nodded, wary of her request. _Good_ , Alex thought. Let them worry.

“Good. Ear pieces on, you’ll be receiving updates from the tech team who will be reading information on their screens that have pre-assigned to the mission. They are your support. Now, if anyone gets injured, any broken legs or actual head wounds, you tell the tech team and they will pass it on to us. We’ve made an effort to prevent any actual injuries but I know Jones is accident prone.”

Tahlia shrunk back, an embarrassed flush across her cheeks. The girl could and would trip over air. Despite her clumsiness, she was wicked smart, could speak over seven languages and had a sharp eye. She just wouldn’t be Alex’s first thought when it came to stealth missions.

“Tech team will advise you to get into position. Got it?”

“Got it!” they responded, their faces all young and seriously that Alex let only a small smile escape her grasp.

“Good,” she said. Then she went and handed the intel to Agent Lopez before she moved into position at the top of the building, where cameras had been set up to overwatch them. In the room, J’onn was there, nodding at her arrival. “You don’t have to be here,” she said.

“It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out,” he said. “And I haven’t seen your recruits in action yet.”

Alex felt a nervous pulse, before steading it. They would be fine. Her recruits were good, smart people she trusted, and there was an entire team of DEO agents ready to swoop in and pull them out if it by some bad luck, it got too dangerous. It shouldn’t, they had all past their physical, they had a good amount of training and were all capable adults.

“Medics are located on floor one and three,” Vasquez said, as if sensing where her thoughts were going. Alex nodded, holding her hands stiffly behind her. She could see her team from a small camera, going over the map. Most of the recruits were nodding and listening to Nilo, but she could see a few who had other ideas, didn’t approve of his leadership.

Saunders squatted perpendicular from him, looking over the map and remained passive. She didn’t respond, didn’t disagree, but when spoken to she nodded along. Alex didn’t know if she felt reassured or concerned. The woman was smart, but used to having things her way.

The simulation allowed a good chance for her recruits to rise and prove something that she hadn’t seen before. She had to sit back and let it happen.

After all, it was a simulation _not_ an actual mission. That would come later.

Alex waited. Then one of the volunteers said, “November is on the clock.” Moments after that the tech team came through the comms, directing her team to their line up. It was dark outside by that point and Alex gave a look to Vasquez, who returning it with a short, supportive nod. It was time. Four hours on the clock. “Delta is on the clock,” the volunteer said and the counter lit up above Alex’s head.

She never liked sitting back. It’d be easier if she was in there, even if it was against them. But it was an unfair conflict of interest and this had to be by the books to truly test them at the best of their abilities. Even the tech team’s trainer, Lucas Ngo, was in the room with Alex, watching their progress from a different selection of monitors.

Alex watched as Nilo lead the team in through a side entrance, having Ramiez on their back as he entered first. They held their guns ready, pressed against their shoulders but Alex could see their trigger fingers were held flat against the side of the gun and not read to pull. _Good_ , she thought.

They moved through the first section, taking down two of the guards before they had a chance to respond. Chest and head wounds, two shots each. Nilo still lead them, using a single hand to direct the group into two teams, giving a chance for Ramiez to take the lead with his faction. Alex could see the wisdom there, Ramiez was cautious to Nilo’s reckless. As a Bravo team it made sense.

The Bravo team headed down a corridor. Nilo’s group now becoming the Alpha team. Alex watched as the two cleared the bottom level easy in twenty minutes. Silent and quick. No one was taking risks yet.

“Delta moving up to the second floor,” one of the volunteers said. Alex rolled back her shoulders. This was where it would begin to get tricky for her team.

The team moved up the stairs, Nilo took point on the stairwell, looking up to see if anyone was there. Ramiez kept their back, making sure that no one followed. Then, they came to the second level door. Here, Nilo stopped, directing the team to have eyes and ears on both sides. They were expecting another corridor that snaked around the room.

Nilo had Abdul open the door, quick, quiet and fast as he took to the front. There, he would see that it was an open plan. All the walls, except for the fire escape stairs on the other side, and the bathroom, had been knocked down.

There were desks and cabinets about to look like an office, but nothing that could be considered adequate cover.

Nilo dropped back and told the team what he saw. Six men, appearing laconic as they played a game of cards, their guns by their sides. He informed the team to ignore the second level as what they wanted was on the third. Saunders disagreed, pointing out that the team could come up behind them on the stairs and flank them against what was upstairs.

The disagreement was short. Nilos directed the team upstairs, but Alex watched as Saunders hung back and then entered the room by herself. If anyone saw her from the team, they chose to ignore the defiance.

_Dammit_ , Alex thought.

“Victoria Saunders,” J’onn said from beside her.

Alex nodded. “Arrogant, I knew I should have…” she sighed. There was still three hours and twenty minutes on the clock. It wasn’t over yet.

“Let’s see what she does.”

As Nilo’s directed the Delta team upstairs, Saunders entered the second level floor and took a quick reconnaissance of the room, moving to a desk that was out of line of sight. She was fast, taking her gun and shooting four of the volunteers, but the other two grabbed at a walkie-talkie and gave warning to upstairs before Nilo’s team could enter.

As soon as the Nilo entered the third floor, he was met with tear gas. “Masks!” Alex heard him call over the comms. They were fast, but Tahlia fumbled with the mask, getting a mouthful of teargas. She tried to keep going but fell to her knees.

A medic, dressed in red and protective gear, pulled Tahlia aside and out of the room, over to a seperate section where they washed out the teargas and explain why they had pulled her out. She’d be fine, if a little worse for wear. But Alex felt disappointment rise as the stupidity of what had happened.

Nilo pushed the team to cover. The masks would make visibility harder on top of the thick plumes of teargas in the air.

Down a floor, Saunders had taken out one of the two remaining people, just as four more came down the fire escape stairs to her right, flanking her where she stood. Alex watched as she took out three more before she was shot in the leg and arm. Even still, while down she managed to take out one more before a headshot took her out from the last volunteer. There, her weaponed stopped firing and a medic came to her and switched off the electric current, checking her over for any damage.

Alex could see Saunder’s face was pinched, red blotches pulling in her cheeks as she realised the severity of what she had done.

Up a floor, Nilo’s team became overloaded with the volunteers, outnumbered three-to-one. Nilo’s persisted, making his way to where the classified documents were. Kelly went down, removed by the medic, and another got a leg wound and was unable to pull back. Alex watched as Nilo ran straight past the fallen team member, not even noticing as he pulled the team back to escape.

It was Ramiez who picked up Warren and helped drag her back, Abdul covering them, taking out the only volunteer who had made it past the second floor.

Alex shook her head. Under two hours, as promised, but anger overtook. She was too furious to finish watching, letting them pull out. They had a long way to go until they shaped up. Only a few stood out.

“They did good for a first mission,” J’onn said.

“Not good enough,” she spat, turning away from the monitors. She couldn’t even look at them. Running a hand through her hair, she tried to find some semblance of calm, but she kept picturing Warren on the ground and the way Nilo had just ran past. Over and over the image of him replayed. Alex shut her eyes, a headache brewing in her temples as the anger reached to a new level. She didn’t know how she could face them without blowing up and tearing them apart.They had begun so well. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to see their faces again.

A part of her wanted to kick him and Saunders out, immediately. A part of her just wanted to go home, have a drink.

All at once, her headache eased and Alex opened her eyes. The world had turned blue.

Except it wasn’t the warehouse she opened her eyes to. The room was gone and in its place was not Earth, at least not anywhere on Earth she knew. Gone was the yellow sun, replaced with a blue one. There was sand beneath her boots and the feeling of _wrong_ as she breathed in a sulphuric smell.

“ _Alexandra Danvers_ ,” said a low, strange voice, seemingly for all around her. “ _So nice to finally meet you_.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex feels like a blank slate, and then the anger begins to build.

Alex awoke, feeling like she was underwater. She could hear voices, but they were distorted, as if sounding from far away. It was the red light of the monitor she saw first as she uncrossed her arms, pulling her hand away from her head. The headache had returned, coming to a mild throb she could deal with.

“Agent Danvers?” J’onn said, and all the voices were loud and clear again, like her head had broken the surface.

Alex turned and faced him. Had she fallen asleep for a moment?

“Are you okay?” he asked, voice low so the others wouldn’t hear. Alex flicked her fingers a quiet gesture meant to carry that everything was fine, even as the disembodied voice calling her name rang through her ears. It had known her by name. What the hell had _that_ been?

“We can talk about the recruits later.”

_The recruits._ She blinked and shook her head. “No, it’s fine,” she answered. “What did you want to say.”

“Just that your recruits showed well. I was particularly impressed by Felipe Ramiez.”

Alex nodded, she had been too. He’d always been quiet in training, joking with a few others –– especially Nilo –– but maybe there was something more that she had missed there. “His Aunt nominated him. She works with Lucy Lane.”

“Ah,” J’onn said, summing up his thoughts in that singular sound. It was neither good nor bad the way he said it. But there was a larger depth to it than indifference.

Alex hadn’t met Ramiez’s aunt, but considering that Lucy had personally mentioned Felipe on behalf of her, then she must be a good person. He certainly was. “The others did well. You should be proud,” J’onn said.

Alex couldn’t find the words to respond. She felt as though there was an absence of something in her. Everything felt muted all at once and she didn’t know if she had felt any pride, wasn’t even sure if there was a shred of anger to pick at. It was like that brief moment of falling asleep had rebooted her system, wiping all emotions clear.

“Thanks,” she responded, because it was necessary. And then, “I’ll see you tomorrow,”

“Tomorrow, then,” J’onn agreed.

Alex turned away from J’onn and watched as everyone began packing up. Ngo stood, his expression the same mixture of disappointment and pride that Alex felt should have reflected on her own face. It didn’t matter, she would find it soon.

“Danvers,” Ngo said, giving her a short nod. He had a silver pen in his hand a series of notes in shorthand from the small notebook he always carried. “Your team did well.”

“As did yours,” she responded out of respect. There was truth to her words. His team had done more than could have ever been expected of her in the same time in training. Perhaps the truth was that they both could only see their own failures.

There was still plenty of time to find out what type of people their recruits were going to be, but Alex knew that the both of them had hoped for better results. No one stood out in any astonishing way, but they had certainly found themselves disappointed.

She drew in a deep breath, feeling a wave of disappointment edge back into her system. It felt cold and sapped at the remainder energy she had for the day. Still, she had to speak to her recruits. They wouldn’t know what to do with themselves now that it was done.

Alex made her way down to where her recruits were. The steps down the three floors seemed heavy and loud in her ears, continuing for what felt like two floors more than she remembered. She couldn’t muster up the anger any more for the boost of sudden energy, it was gone. All she felt was tired.

The metal door that lead out of the stairwell creaked, but her team didn’t even look her way, too distracted in their own victories. She’d have to unteach them that.

Once, someone had made a Harry Potter joke out in the hall about her. “You know Alex, _Constant vigilance!_ ” It had stung, but if she was been truthful, there was a lot about the character Moody she felt was under appreciated.

The recruits were underneath the spotlights, near where all the vans had been parked, and Alex could see them high-fiveing one another, as they re-told their exploits. Saunders stood apart, deep shame across her face as she watched them with a sense of envy.

Those of the group that had been injured were now fine after being patched by the medics, no worse for wear except maybe for Tahlia, whose eyes were reddened by the tear gas. Nonetheless, she was laughing with the others, a wide grin as she laughed as Kelly re-told a mocking visual tale of what happened to her.

She was going to crush their happiness, Alex realised. But it had to happen.

Alex walked over, boots heavy on the concrete until their heads swivelled around and her recruits shaped up, standing with their back straight, arms behind them in line; they were awaiting her appraisal, Alex realised. Their expression bright with happiness for the most part.

“You’re dismissed,” she told them.

The group looked surprised, and then concerned.

“But ––“ Kelly began.

“Just…” she felt the word spit from her mouth, frustrated at the touch of a raw nerve. The last thing she needed was someone speaking out of turn. “Just go home,” she said. “I’ll discuss it tomorrow.”

Before any of them could say another word, Alex turned away, as she walked back to the building, she heard the low shuffle of confused conversation, the murmuring became short and snappy with resentment or with misplaced optimism that it was all a joke. No doubt, her recruits would stew over it, thinking the worst.

What did it matter? She was their superior, not their friend. That was an easy enough box to close and end any sour feelings that might try to bubble out.

Alex made her way back into the building and upstairs to finish packing up. It was done fast and quick, the volunteers used to packing up gear in a short time. Boxes clicked shut, wires were wound up and everyone moved the cases either into the vans or back into place.

When everything was done, she took a ride with one of the volunteers, back to the DEO and helped them pack all the things into one of the storage rooms for the next training simulation or surveillance mission that required it, each one going into their designated spot, lest Winn got word that they hadn’t followed his _precise_ stickers labelled L.2.3v to signal where each thing belonged.

Just as she was leaving, Winn ducked her head in, probably to ensure no one had messed up his boxes, and then flinched. “Didn’t go well?” he asked.

“It went fine,” Alex said. “They completed the mission in due time. Only four of them were removed by the medics. Would have been better if it’d been none, but a few them aren’t going to finish the program anyway.”

“Alex?”

“What?” she asked, all at once her anger return. Then, drawing in a breath, she pushed her mood back down. “I’m…I’m tired Winn. I’ve been doing this all day. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I’ll go to someone else. It’s fine.”

Alex nodded. She knew she should prod at what Winn really wanted from her, but at this time, she really honestly did not care. She wanted a shower, she wanted a drink. She didn’t want to be at work for a moment longer.

On the way home, she felt the weight of her own failure in her team fall onto her shoulders. She hadn’t trained them enough, hadn’t worked with them enough to inspire team work, loyalty and responsibility. She’d only inspired Saunders to do something stupid. What kind of a trainer was she that she couldn’t get a small group of people to work past their differences and protect each other?

_Dammit_.

“Alex?”

God, did everyone need to talk to her today? She turned and looked at her neighbour, mustering enough to at least give a polite smile. “Mark, hi.”

“Hey, you’re out late.”

“Work,” she said shortly.

“Oh that…um, science job right?”

“Right,” she said, her teeth snapping over the word despite the smile. But despite the short answer, Mark seemed to linger, fiddling with the watch on his right hand before jiggling the keys he had in his other hand. It didn’t take more than Behavioural Science 101 to read _anxious_ in his movements. “Was there something I could do?” she asked.

“So, the others have been noticing that your bike’s been taking up a car spot. As you know there’s a limit on car spots for residents at the moment…” Alex rolled her eyes as he kept speaking, unable to even be bothered with social etiquette at that point. “Do you mind…parking it somewhere else. It doesn’t really need to be taking up a whole space.”

God she wanted to punch his face. “Where should I park my bike, Mark?” she asked, her voice level and calm. “Because I’m pretty sure we’ve had this discussion before, and that an agreement was made,” her voice was getting louder. “That as part of the agreement for the lease included a fee for a car spot than I should _be paying_ for a whole spot, not _sharing_ some spot so Leon Maloney can park his boyfriend’s car!”

“Alexandra ––“

“The answer’s no,” she said cutting him off, levelling her voice back a normal range that didn’t echo around the concrete building. “You want me to move my bike from the car spot, then turn one of the park spots specifically into motorcycle parking and charge a quarter of the price.”

Motorcycle helmet in hand, Alex left the parking lot and went into the elevator. Her hand trembled as she pressed at the floor. Steading both it and the tightness in her chest, Alex dug at the anger and buried it back down. It wouldn’t do to allow her anger to win over her again, no matter how satisfying it might feel to go back down to the lot and punch Mark’s stupid face. Letting anger get the control over her would mean that the next time she interrogated someone, she might lose leverage for good. It wasn’t good enough.

The doors slid opened and Alex went to her apartment, heading inside as she dropped her bag down from work and took a moment to just stop and stretch at her aching muscles.

She needed to stop thinking about her recruits and yet somehow manage to get a full report done for them within the next week to hand over to J’onn. Just the thought of watching the surveillance cameras again had her skin itching to go and do something else, like a bar. Get into a fight, yell at somebody else.

Instead, she cleaned out her bag, and washed up the few cups she had lying around. Then, she went to the bathroom, stripping off to just bury herself underneath hot water as if she could burn the frustration from her skin. She felt tired, she felt like she could sleep as if there was something just under her skin and trying to get out.

She ate, and then drank a few beers. Only then did the anxiety begin to numb enough that she could sit down and drink a few more beers. East the leftover pizza in her fridge, drink some more and then fall asleep on the her couch, a knitted blanket over her lap as Netflix kept playing some random 90s sitcom before it eventually stopped to ask ‘Are you still there?’

She awoke to the sound of movement.

“Well,” Sara said. “You look worse for wear.” Alex opened her eyes, moving the arm she had thrown over her eyes to find herself staring at the silhouette of Sara, haloed by the cityscape behind her.

It was a strange feeling, as though she was waking up in a hotel room and nothing quite felt right. Tugging at the pyjamas shirt, she sat up and ran a hand through her hair. “What are you doing here?” she asked, groggy from sleep. Or maybe still a little tipsy. The world felt fuzzier than her usual dreams of Sara.

“Well, I don’t know. Usually you come and visit me, but it seems like I’m the one visiting you tonight.”

“Welcome,” she said, feeling the extent of her voice fall flat. “You can wake up if you want now.”

“You ok?”

“I’m fine,” Alex said, smiling bitterly. “Just… _fine_.”

“Ahh,” Sara said, nodding. “The famous Danvers ‘fine’. I’ve heard that one before. Last time it was the _result_ of drinking but somehow I don’t get that this is the same situation.”

Alex turned and looked over at the beer bottles. She should feel embarrassed, she knew that, but the annoyance at her recruits rushed back instead and in all honesty, she couldn’t be bothered trying to find some corner of herself that would feel shame at the bottles of beer. After all, it was only four small bottles. And what looked to be a glass of half drunk scotch. Had she had scotch?

“You don’t get to judge me.”

“I’m not judging,” Sara said. “In fact, I would mind some myself.”

“Well go right ahead. Glasses are in the top cabinet.”

Sara went around the couch, to her kitchen while Alex tried to sit up and let the anger disperse. It didn’t make any sense that she felt so frustrated. Especially at Sara.Sara had about as much choice in the matter of appearing here as Alex had of her being here. Alex tried to dig at the source of her anger, but fell short as Sara came to sit down beside her, setting two clean glasses on the table before she grabbed at the bottle of scotch.

“You know,” she began as she poured the drinks, “if it wasn’t for Ray cleaning up after us, the Waverider would be a _constant_ mess of dirty dishes and empty bottles of beers. So don’t think I’m judging you on a bad day.”

“I’ve see your room,” Alex said, before taking the offered glass that had decent fill of whiskey. Taking a deeper sip than she should, she swallowed the hard liquor and saiid to her, “You’re _spotless_.”

“Your apartment is far from dirty. You have a small mess on a single coffee table."

“Sure,” Alex said as she drew another sip of the whiskey.

“Sure? Ouch. Last time I try to apologise jerk.” It was meant as a humours attempt, but it fell flat on Alex, only turning out to rub at her nerves even more.

“That wasn’t even an apology,” she said, “You just poured yourself some of my alcohol and made a comment to the effect that I _probably_ cleaned.”

Sara paused, and then after taking a sip of her drink, gave a sardonic smile and said, “Sorry.” Despite the smile, Alex could see a change her expression, hurt and confusion probably, before it was taken up by the glass.

Alex downed her own drink, pouring another. The alcohol, amazingly, seemed to be having an affect on her so maybe she wasn’t asleep. Maybe this was just some drunken hallucination. Though if it was, it’d be a cause for worry.

“So…you going to talk about it?” Sara asked.

“About what?”

“What’s got you in a mood.”

Alex placed the glass onto the table harder than was needed. “ _Nothing_ has me in a mood. I just had a long day at work and I didn’t think I needed to explain that to _you_.”

“Just trying to make conversation.”

“Make it somewhere else.” Alex shook her head. She was not in the mood for it. “Go and wake up, Sara. I’m too tired for this and whatever games you want to play in my head, today.” She caught a glimpse of Sara’s face, reacting as if Alex had punched her in the gut before the dream melted and Alex found herself slipping awake.

_Are you still there?_ Appeared on her screen, waiting for a response. Fumbling for the remote, she shut it off and turned over on the couch, falling back to sleep as she dreamt of somewhere else that was far, far away from Sara Lance.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only a short chapter today, folks. Sorry. Longer ones to return to your regular schedule soon.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kissing her had been a mistake.

From the bits she remembered of yesterday, Alex regretted how she had spoken to Sara. She definitely regretted Winn, but Mark…she didn’t regret Mark at all. In the morning, when she had see him get into his shiny red car, his face pinched and a little frightened of her, Alex felt almost like pushing her luck and making her intentions very clear about the parking spot.

But she didn’t. Instead she went to have breakfast with her sister before work began for either of them.

“You okay?” Kara asked, as they waited for their order. The servers were running around mad with the morning rush and there was already a line to the door. Alex and Kara both made sure to place a tip in the jar.

“Hmm?” Alex looked at her sister, ready to tell her that _no_ , she wasn’t okay. But Kara had her serious face on. “Yeah, just thinking,” she said. “How are you?”

“Better,” Kara said, sounding confident. “I spoke to James and he’s letting me run the story. I think it’s important and no one else is reporting it. Lena’s behind it too.” Kara smiled at whatever memory held in those words, visibly easing. If Alex didn’t know better, she would have thought her sister had a crush.

Perhaps she did.

“This is for the gun control article?”

“Sort of, but we didn’t want the magazine to sound left-wing since it’s meant to be neutral and gun control is a…very touchy spot. But I spoke to Raja’s father and he’s letting me interview them. I’ll be interviewing people who own guns, Lena’s pro-gun for safety after-all, and just…reporting the dangers of criminals having access to guns. This way, at least, maybe Raja can be known as more than just another nameless victim to gun violence.”

_Raja_ , Alex thought. She hadn’t even think to know the boy’s name, but Kara did. She knew his name, probably knew the whole family. “That sounds great,” she said. “You’ll have to forward me a copy of it when you’re done.” Not that Alex didn’t already read each and every article Kara wrote for CatCo.

“Of course,” Kara agreed. “After this, I was thinking about a few more articles I could pass around. I’ll have to find some sources first, but I think I’m on the right path.”

Alex felt herself ease with her sister’s hopeful words. Perhaps this, at least, would lead her sister back to herself.

Kara collected their coffee as her name was called, clutching a brown paper bag of bagels. Gone was the day of running for Cat Grant and her coffees, Alex thought. Back then, carving out time to see Kara was hard enough without juggling her own responsibilities in the mix. At least now it was easier, especially now that Kara had come into her own as Supergirl and she didn’t have to hide her work with the DEO.

“How’d the simulation go?” Kara asked as she handed Alex’s coffee over. Alex had another hour until her shift started, but Kara began in twenty minutes, so they began their walk towards CatCo.

“Oh, you know,” she replied. “It was pretty good to watch.”

“Yeah?” Kara said. “I knew they’d be awesome. How could they not when my sister’s their trainer, hey?” Alex nodded, shoving the pang that shot through her away. Kara didn’t mean to hurt her. “So, they must be psyched after finding out that they’d impressed you.”

“Well, I sent them home straight after. They were all pretty tired and I need to go over everything again to find some criticism.”

“Probably nothing though, right?”

“Kara, they’re rookies. There’s plenty of mistakes to correct,” she didn’t mean to snap her words, but as she did, she found a truth in them. They _were_ just rookies and she shouldn’t have expected so much from them on their first big test. They were stupid mistakes, but there was enough there that she knew where their individual shortcomings were now, as well as the gaps in her own training. Wasn’t that the intention of the simulation anyway.

“Sorry,” Kara said.

Alex shook her head. “You don’t need to apologise. I do.” She bumped her shoulder into Kara as they continued their walk. “I’m sorry, I’ve just been busy with everything, and…” she trailed off, thinking again back to the weeks before. She’d been foolish. What had she done to ease the tension between her two strongest recruits?

“What’s on your mind?” Kara asked.

“Nothing, just thinking about the recruits,” she said. As her thoughts mulled over her recruits, it felt like a weight was lifting from her shoulders. The disappointment was still there, sticking to her. But she knew what to do and that, at least, was something she could work with.

The first thing she needed to do was bridge the gap in her teaching.

After dropping of Kara at work, Alex dropped into a few different shops and picked up a few games to take to the training room. And then she headed off to work.

The training room was quiet when she entered, she placed the plastic bag down onto the table as she sat back and looked over everyone. She began, firstly, with her arms crossed, a neutral expression on their face to make them squirm for a little bit, just because, before she began.

The room was quiet enough that she could hear the whistle in someone’s exhaling breath.

“I want to begin by first saying that I was impressed as a whole by you. You’ve come along way from the amateur recruits that showed up on the first day and had no idea how to punch correctly, let alone fight back,” she began. “I will speak to you all individually about your strengths and weaknesses and what the plan is to get you to the next stage. But I want you all to congratulate yourselves now.”

She could see them ease, clapping briefly. There was a soft murmur and then silence again.

“Now, there are two big things I noticed that we need to work on. Firstly, speed, I need to have you respond fast to orders given to you. You need to be on the mark and ready, so we’ll be working on that in the coming weeks. Secondly, it’s obvious to me that a lot of you aren’t focusing on each other as a team. Your team is going to be your new family. I don’t care how much or how little you get along with one another, you are going to eventually depend on the people in this room to have your back when you’re under fire. You need to trust them with your life.”

She paused then, looking over the group to see how they responded to her. There was a collective frown, but an interested look. Reaching into the bag she brought into the room, Alex pulled out firstly Twister, and then, Cards Against Humanity. “So let’s get to know each other.”

Alex let them play for two hours, keeping her distance as their instructor to watch how they interacted. There was lots of laughing, annoyed huffs here and there, but overall a good atmosphere. She would engage J’onn for some team building exercises out in the field again. Paintball had worked well, but perhaps they needed something more creative.

After Alex felt the recruits had relaxed enough, she brought them back to the proper training schedule. However, from the small gaming alone, she could already see a difference in the dynamic of everyone. Even Saunders seemed more at ease as people joked around with her. Good.

While Alex had everyone studying for a quick online quiz on the computer’s intranet, she pulled Saunders out of the room and took her across the hall, into a smaller training room.

“So,” Alex said. “Before I completely my report on you for the simulation, I want to understand your motivations.”

“My motivation’s, ma’am?”

“You disobeyed direct orders from your team leader.”

“They would have come up the stairwell Either behind us, or on the other side as reinforcements,” Saunders explained. “If we just left them there, they would have flanked us. We would have been dead.”

Alex nodded. It had been set up so that if the team went against them, the third floor would come down, or if they skipped it to the third, the second floor would come up behind them and flank them. “But you went in alone.”

“Nilo’s was going to let them come up behind us. They would have killed ––“ she stopped herself there, embarrassed. “I mean, the simulation would have been a failure.”

“You ended up ‘dying’, should I see that as a failure?”

“Yeah, well, the team got out because of me. Even if I failed.” Saunders drew a breath and exhaled. “This is my second strike, isn’t it?” she asked.

Alex blinked, “Second? What makes you think that you’ve had a first strike?”

“Before…when you didn’t give me point, you said that I might be better suited elsewhere.“

“You had an opinion, Saunders. I’m not going to give you a strike because you think you deserve more. You should be chasing after what you want.” Alex shook her head. “I offered the transfer in case that was what you wanted. You have a lot of skills and yeah, sometimes you do run loops around some of the others, but you need to stop thinking that makes you better than them. And stop _acting_ like you are because it will get you killed.”

Saunders shifted on her feet, adverting her eyes as she digested what Alex said. “So…I’m not close to being kicked out.”

“Not yet. You did well. You had your team’s back. In fact, I was impressed. You went in knowing you were outnumbered. That’s the most important thing I want you to have, okay? You can run as many loops as you want around the others, but if it looks to me like you’re the type of person who’ll leave your team behind to save your own skin, I will kick you out and I won’t be setting up a transfer to another department.”

Saunders nodded, a small smile turning at the corner of her lips. “Understood,” she said.

“Good, go and sit in the corner quietly while everyone else finishes their test. There’s a couple of card games to place with others.”

She pulled out Kelly and Warren next, who both spoke about their experiences before Alex broke down what she wanted from them. With Warren, she discussed how Nilo left her behind. “I mean, it was just a simulation, so it didn’t matter, and I would of told him to, anyway.”

“But what if it had been real and he’d left you in enemy territory. You could have been held captive and tortured for information.”

Warren stopped, drawing her breath. “But getting the dossier was more important.”

Alex shook her head. “I said it was your mission to get it and that it was classified information I didn’t want you to look at. Do you know what type of information is likely to be classified and that important officials don’t want agents to see?”

“Dirty secrets.”

Alex nodded. “They very rarely worth more than your life. So if you need to pull out of a mission because it seems suicidal, that is fair and reasonable. If something is life or death, such as Nuclear missile codes, I will always tell you.” There, Warren gave a small laugh. “I’ll make this clearer to the team as well, but I want you to think about this, okay? You are going to be given access to highly classified information soon, so you’ll need to start thinking about what’s worth dying for your country for and what’s something that’s not. More importantly, you need to think about what’s worth letting your friends die for when you give the orders to go into a warehouse.”

Warren nodded. “Understood, Ma’am,” she said.

Alex nodded. “Now, the other thing I wanted you to do was to work on your hand signals. I don’t think you’re as fluent as you should be. You seemed confused when Nilo was talking about the second floor.”

Warren flushed, giving a nod. “Will do.”

“Good. Go back to the training room and finish up there.”

She didn’t speak to Nilo that day. There was much she wanted to praise and condemn in his actions. However, the more she spoke to the other students, the more she found herself unwilling to speak to him as she realised the truth. He wasn’t the leader she had originally envisioned. Certainly he cared for the team and would work with them well, but an undeniable need for self-preservation won out over the need to protect his team. Self preservation, though an important survival tactic, was undeniably a flaw when it came to being a team leader. She needed loyalty. Someone who wasn’t going to leave the team behind.

Under usual circumstances, Alex would have been content with working on someone else as she had with him but she had found herself inexplicably drawn to Nilo, seeing parts of herself in him. In a way, she felt almost as though she could re-do her own past with him, save him from all the mistakes she had made.

She didn’t know how to say that to him, and was quite concerned that he’d get the wrong idea from her and think she was (God forbid) flirting with him. So rather than face him and explain her disappointment, she avoided him and watched as at the end of training, Nilo left, his expression guarded but visibly confused and hurt.

Alex felt guilty for side-stepping the issue, but she had granted herself one more day to clear her head and consider a plan of action for tomorrow to address the issue. There were four others she hadn’t spoken to about the test as well, so it should have hardly seemed like she was singling him out, but Nilo was a smart kid and the way his face looked as he glanced back told Alex that he knew the truth.

On the central intelligence floor, towards the backend of her shift, Alex placed Nilo out of her mind and flicked over emails, replying to a few about the next up coming test for the recruits. A small, theoretical one to test their cognitive abilities. On her computer at home, she’d been speaking to Hassan, the previous trainer, about using the test he had crafted himself, but Hassan’s comments were few in replies –– which was reasonable going by his social media of skiing at snow lodges and eating marshmallows by fire. Here was a man who had retired early with a sizeable banked fortune, and decided to holiday for a few years while ‘working on his memoirs’.

It made her long for the same thing. Maybe not retirement, but a holiday would be nice.

It was as she thought about skiing and the last time that she had gone when she saw Winn with a face that looked somewhere between sad puppy and kid with his hand in the cookie jar. “ _Hi_ Alex,” he said, testing the waters as he popped around her computer. “Whatcha up to?”

“Hi Winn,” she responded whilst raising her brows at him. “What did you do?”

“Me? _I_ didn’t do anything…” he said, looking very much so like he had been an accomplice to doing _something._ “But, um, I may know of a teensy problem with the upcoming mission.”

“Which is?”

“ _Well_ , I may have…accidentally…caught on some chatter from the CIA. By complete accident, because spying on the CIA would be…so…so stupid,” he said, giving Alex a very big idea of what he’d doing.

“And?” she prompted.

“Well, they may be planning to…double cross us, maybe. Probably. Almost certainly actu-“

“Winn,” she cut through his babbling. “What do you mean they’re planning to _double-cross_ us? The CIA and the DEO work for the same Government.”

“The ah, the black market thing. Team up, yay,” he said, half-enthusiastically punching his fist into the air before letting it drop back as she continued to stare blankly. “Well, I think it’s…it’s a way for some operatives to get their hands on alien tech that we’ve put restrictions on… you know the one the president backed that said all tech is to be surrendered to us so that we don’t have scary trained soldiers running around with weapons that could hurt Supergirl and get into foreign agents’ hands.”

Alex let out a breath, a shiver running down her spine. She wished she could say the she was surprised, but it was the CIA. “And that’s going down in few days,” she said. “Have you passed it onto J’onn?”

“No. Should I?”

“Yes!” she snapped.

“But we had explicit instruction not to get involved with the mission. It was a big deal, or whatever, that the CIA wanted to work with us and J’onn told me, in very clear words,not to ––”

“Just tell him,” she said. “Or he’ll here it from me, and then he’ll wonder why he’s hearing about information you found, from me.”

“Okay, right, doing that now.”

As Winn ran off, Alex considered, very carefully, how much she wanted to get invested in the feud between the CIA and the DEO. Weighing the option of following Winn and most certainly being kept back at work for another few hours, or getting sweet, much needed sleep and potentially seeing Sara to apologise, it seemed like an almost easy option.

But the CIA were trying to get hand on technology that could potentially harm her sister and she had told Sara to go away the night before, so Sara probably wouldn’t want to see her.

If Sara could even see her to begin with. A sudden rapid growing tumour made more sense than cross-universal communication between two humans that should be 100% impossible without some sort of technology, but hey, her sister could fly so at this point she wasn’t buying that Sara was or wasn’t real. She was just Schrödinger’s assassin.

Her life had been so much more easy before joining the DEO.

Alex made her way to where Winn was explaining to J’onn how he’d come across the chatter by “accident”, using it twelve times in as many sentences. She could see Winn’s awkward face as he tried to dance around the fact that he’d gone against explicit orders, while J’onn stared, his expression masked of either judgement or anger as he listened over what was being said.

“What do you think, Alex?” he asked once Winn had finished his story.

“I think it’s the CIA and this wouldn’t be the first time that they’ve tried to get their hands on tech they’re not meant to. I also wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more weapons that they haven’t surrendered over to us.”

J’onn crossed his arms, his expression pulling as he thought over precariousness of the situation. If they confronted the CIA, the CIA would deny it and then it was another government faction that the DEO wasn’t in the good books with. If they didn’t and the deal went south, they had an organisation with access to highly volatile weapons that could turn armour to swiss cheese. They needed to be careful with what they chose to do. If it was bad or misconstrued intel, than everything could go off the rails very quickly. The CIA were, especially, a faction they didn’t want to cross, given that the DEO’s funding could go from large to nought very quickly if the CIA spoke up.

“Is there anything within the deal that we need to worry about?”

“Going from what we know already about the deal?” Winn quested. “I mean, there’s a few grenades and guns up that we don’t really want the general populace to get their hands on, but that’s all stuff that’s only a few years from our technology anyway. There’s one gun they probably have their eye on. But the whole thing was about working out where the person was getting the tech from.”

“So there’s nothing we immediately need to prevent the CIA from getting?”

“Well, not that we know about, anyway. But…this wasn’t about the arms deal so much as the auction it’s connected to. The person trading is meant to be unveiling something big in the coming days, but only a select few were invited to partake in the auction. Rumour has it that it’s similar to the weapon that turned the town in Arkansas into a crater back in ’84. We, well the old DEO anyway, never recovered it from the site.”

“I see.” J’onn was quiet for a moment and Alex already knew the answer. They would play nice with the CIA and see how it went down. A few weapons given to them weren’t ideal, but they needed the CIA as an ally more than an enemy at this point.

J’onn said as much, before instructing Alex to pass on the message to Agent Merkel, who was running point on the mission. As predicted, Merkel wanted a detailed explanation of everything Winn said, which took half an hour. Then the intel needed to be checked, other people needed to be told and by the time Alex eventually clocked out, she’d stayed two and a half hours over her intended clock-out period.

Which just meant that she had earned more money for the IRS to tax in the coming year.

When Alex got home, she fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. And just like that, she found herself opening her eyes as Sara began poking around her apartment.

“Hey,” she said. And then felt awkward. Was hey the appropriate greeting? Should she have just remained quiet and sat up, or…

Sara paused and looked over at her. There was a strange, tight expression on her face before it was painted over with a tight smile. “Morning. Nice bed-head.”

“Morning?” she looked over at alarm clock beside her bed, but it just blinked 12:00 as though it had been reset. Her heart rate eased before she remembered that it was her rostered day off anyway and she had no reason to go into a panic if she had been sleeping in. “H-how are you?” she asked, her voice stuttering as she felt her chest begin to tighten from the night before. Was that the reason for Sara’s rigid posture?

Sara nodded, though her mouth was a single, straight line, rather than a sardonic smile that she was used to. “What about you? Gonna kick me out again?” she asked.

Climbing out of the bed, Alex smoothed down her hair and tried to find it in herself to not allow her own anxiety to build up from the harsh (but fair) words as she attempted to find an appropriate apology to say back.

But as she watched Sara flick through the magazines she had on her coffee table, her words stuck in her throat as she tried to think about how to apologise; _sorry I was an asshole the other night_ didn’t quite cover it.

As she swallowed, ready to just toss out whatever apology would come out, Alex noticed a bruise on Sara’s shoulder and neck, exposed where the singlet didn’t cover as the woman had tossed down the magazine and began eyeing the nearby bookshelf. Walking over to Sara, she reached out to touch at the marks.

Sara, deliberately trying not to flinch, grabbed at Alex’s outstretched hands and placed them down, away from neck and shoulder. “Are you okay?” Alex asked.

“It’s a few bruises,” she shrugged. “I already have the all good from Gideon.”

“A few bruises in the shape of hands that look like they have circled your neck.”

“I got the better of him,” Sara said. “Rather, Ray did first, but then I left my mark.” And she smiled again, but it still didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Sara,” Alex whispered, as if saying her name could also say everything else she wanted to.

The looked returned in her eyes and Alex knew what it was then as she saw it dilated the pupil. _Haunted_. She’d seen it in agents before who had witness horrific things. Things that gave Alex nightmares from just hearing what had happened. Whatever it had been, it had to be something big to shake up the unshakeable Sara Lance.

“Last time I was here, you had whiskey,” Sara said as she pulled away, out of touching distance. Alex nodded, going over to the kitchen cabinet where she kept her liquor and opening up the cupboard. There, inside, was her selection of ‘hard liquor’, amongst a few bottles of wines she had received as gifts. Pulling out two glasses, she took one of the nicer whiskey she owned, and poured both herself and Sara a drink.

“Ice?” she questioned, already knowing the answer as Sara came up and took the glass, downing it as if it was a shot. Without a word, Alex topped up the drink. “I’m sorry for snapping at you the other night, and being a jerk,” she said, watching as Sara took her time with the second one, her eyes staring off as if she couldn’t quite work out how to leave the apartment.

“All good.You looked like you had a rough day so I tried not to take it too personally,” she said, shooting Alex a wry smile.

“It had been a day,” Alex agreed. And then, drawing a breath asked, “But that’s still not an excuse. I am sorry.”

“Eh, whiskey’s a good apology anyway, for future references.”

Alex took a sip of her drink, feeling all the more awkward. She didn’t know if this was Sara’s way of payback, or if she was just in a mood. Either way, it made her appetite for whiskey larger as she took a mouthful and then poured herself another, hoping to feel the effects. “How was your day?” she managed to ask as the conversation stagnated.

“You know, a day. But I like your place,” Sara said, as if sensing Alex’s emotions. “It’s, you know, _cosy_ ,” she said, sounding the word to make her intentions clear.

“Says the person who share-houses in a ship,” Alex replied, allowing the conspicuous change of conversation to happen. “And as you can see, I have windows which is more than you can say about your room.”

“Is that so?” Sara asked. She pushed off the kitchen bench and made her way over to where the apartment window was, pulling back the curtain to look out at the cityscape. “And I see you have a lovely view of the opposite building and some loud traffic. Very fancy. I can see that I am missing out.”

“Hey, this is _prime_ real estate.”

“And yet you couldn’t afford walls?”

“That’s…that’s _the point_.”

“Sure, right, well I’ll take a time-ship over prime real estate any day,” Sara said. “Besides I can go anywhere in any time I want for a nice view.” Sara moved over to where the lounge was and laid herself upon it, drink in hand as she took a sip and lolled her head on the couch cushions, ankles crossed as she began trying to get the television to work. It wouldn’t, not because this was a dream, but because the remote’s batteries had died the other night.

“Must be nice to have all of time at hand. Any time you have a disagreement over historic texts you can just go back and ask the person. N-not that that would be a flagrant use of…of…time travel,” Alex whispered the last word and found herself taking another sip of her drink.

Sara paused in her attempts to work the television and looked almost as if she wanted to say something.

The way her expression held as if there was something frightening there. Despite the bruises, there were no scrapes, no lacerations or even dressings covering any wounds that she could visibly see. But the bruises on her neck and shoulder were certainly vicious and spoke of an attack that she almost lost. Or had lost.

Alex made her way to lounge and sat down beside Sara, pouring more of the whiskey into both of their glasses, though she was beginning to sense that she couldn’t get drunk. “Your shoulder looks like it healed up nicely.”

Sara drew a mouthful and then sat back as she shut her eyes. “Gideon," she said in short. “I suppose almost dying means you don’t get a say in what scars you want to keep when you have a time ship that can heal most wounds.”

“You almost died?” Alex asked.

Sara just shrugged, her head leaning back on the lounge as she looked at Alex. “You know, usual stuff. Time and anachronisms and all that. It’s honestly my Tuesday at this point.”

“Sara…” She could see the pain building up in the woman’s face, even as she gave her a tired smile. There was a tremble, just for a moment, in Sara’s hand and Alex wanted to take it in hers the same way she would have had it been Kara’s hand to tremble beside her. But she had seen Sara pull away before… It was too personal a decision to intrude on her space.

And then Alex realised she didn’t care how Sara would react, she almost died, and Alex knew what that was like, no matter how many times it happened. Going in and expecting to die was easy, but surviving wasn’t. Especially when you have to keep going on for others, no matter how hard the march felt.

Reaching beside her, she touched the back of Sara’s hand and then, when Sara didn’t flinch, she laced her fingers through hers, giving a short, firm squeeze, as if she could place the depth of her feelings into it, reassure her that she understood and nothing more needed to be said about what happened.

Sara looked up, her eyes brilliant and sparkling like stained glass just before dusk. For a single moment, she looked surprised before that disappeared into a softened mask as she looked away. “How was that thing you were excited about, anyway?” Sara asked. “The training thing.”

“Good,” Alex said. “Well… it wasn’t good, but…” she sighed and held back the words. Her annoyance at the recruits was nothing on what big thing Sara was avoiding talking about. “It was fine,” she finished. “Just a little disappointing but you know…” and then Alex tried to laugh, but even to her own ears, it sounded forced.

“Yikes, that bad, huh?” She said, before a puzzled look crossed her face, “is that what got you in a mood the other night?”

Alex bit her lip, nodding. “It’s my recruits, they…didn’t do as well in a test as I expected it,” she explained. “They didn’t…do what I wanted to. Maybe I should have made it more difficult.”

“ _More_ difficult? Aren’t they newbies?”

“Yeah. It’s strange, usually, I take on the recruits around the twelve month mark. Low value missions, mostly general recon stuff. By that point they’re all trained up and ready for it, but this year J’onn wanted me to take over the beginning since Agent Hassan moved to Canada to live with his partner.”

“I see,” Sara said. “So you’ve got a mixture of raw talent that’s not shaping up to what you want them to be.”

“No, it’s not that. They’re good, don’t get me wrong. It’s…” and Alex drew in a breath as she realised the truth. “It’s just one of the recruits. I placed him in charge when I shouldn’t have. I thought he was like me, that he would thrive underneath the opportunity for leadership and responsibility.”

“And he didn’t.”

“He did, he does, it’s not that he was awful at it, but…” she paused, trying to word it in her head first. “So, in the simulation, he left one of his team behind. Didn’t even notice that she’d been shot down. Or maybe he did and didn’t care, and I keep talking to all the others and they’re all so blinded by him that they don’t care, and I…I don’t know what annoys me more. That he failed, or that maybe I was just as blind. I mean, he was so focused on winning that he missed the entire point of the simulation.”

Sara paused, nodding. “You’re worried that he’s actually got a shot at becoming a team leader, but doesn’t take on the responsibility of looking after a team.”

“And they’re just recruits, they won’t even be able to _look_ at leading a group for another two years. But…” Alex trailed off, biting her tongue.

“You expected better from him,” Sara finished. “He failed you.”

“When I first started out, you know, I had a _great_ mentor in the program, and then I had some shit ones, like _really_ shit. I had one superior leave a member of my team behind and then threaten to remove me from the program as I dragged him back on a broken leg.” Alex drew in a deep breath, feeling long-forgotten resentment get dredged up again, making her chest feel tight. “I refuse to let a single one of my recruits become so self-centred that they would choose self preservation over letting someone die without flinching. Because you need that, you need to know that your team will have your back, that your C.O. will have your back, no matter what, otherwise when you go in there…you’ll hesitate. Or you’ll panic. Or a million other things. But clearly I failed at preventing that.”

“Or maybe, instead of thinking you’ve failed, you should speak to him,” Sara said. “If it’s coming from you, he’ll listen.”

“Maybe. I don’t know,” Alex sighed. “Maybe it’s too late for him and I should just focus on the others. Bench his leadership capabilities.”

“It’s not too late. Look, take it from a former League of Assassin member.” Sara gave a soft smile before saying, “I think what you’re trying to do is important. A lot of people don’t care about teaching their teams that. You shouldn’t give up because someone failed a single test. That’s not fair and you, Danvers, have a good head on your shoulders. You’ll think it through and come up with some brilliant way to trick him into realising the problem himself.”

Alex looked up at Sara. She didn’t know how to respond to that. Sara’s words hadn’t been harsh or reprimanding, but they did have the effect of making Alex feel ridiculous. Rather than respond, she let the conversation drift away, leaving only the warmth of Sara’s hand in hers as she considered what had been said. There was a reason government factions had a very harsh way of dealing with failure. You couldn’t afford it to happen on the job, but there was also truth into what Sara said as well. Maybe there was something she could do for Nilo, some way to take what was self-preservation and turn it into absolute loyalty for his team. She just needed to work out how.

In the quiet, she turned and peaked at Sara. The woman was pensive in thoughts though there was a strain around her eyes and mouth that spoke of her unsaid problems.

“Did you want me to ask what really has you so shaken up?” Alex asked.

“No. I spent all day thinking about it, I’d prefer not to be dreaming it too.”

The former assassin’s fingers were playing with hers then, running over the length of each digit as she fiddled. It was a strange concept, Alex thought, to consider Sara as a _fiddler_. Everything about her seemed so put-together to the point that it often came across that every movement, every breath was precisely chosen to shift perception of who she was at any given time.

“I’m sorry, too, by the way.”

“Hmm?” Alex looked up at Sara, meeting the woman’s eyes. “What do you have to be sorry about?”

“For the other night,” Sara was smirking at her, teasing her about something.

“For… _oh_ ,” Alex felt the rush of heat in her cheeks as she remembered the feeling of Sara’s touch. It wasn’t as though she had forgotten it, so much as the given circumstances were appropriate to fall back into the thought of. “Why are you apologising for that?”

“For leaving in the middle of what had otherwise been an enjoyable time. It was probably a little bit rude, but you know, asses to kick, ride’s to catch and all that.”

“Right. Well…apology accepted,” Alex said. “Once you get me more whiskey.”

And Sara laughed, her shoulder bumping into hers. And then Alex was laughing too. Something warm flickering in her chest. Excitement, almost, at the banter and the way Sara smiled when she flirted. She liked how bright Sara’s eyes seemed when she was happy, and how her tongue sometimes got caught between her teeth as bit back a joke. Whatever had reached underneath her skin and made Sara appear haunted seemed to have become dormant in the woman as she teased Alex about the red in her cheeks, using her free hand to run across Alex’s skin and brushed hair behind her ear, just as she had that second night.

It was so easy.

Alex looked at her, looked at all the individual freckles on her skin and thought about how much she wanted to kiss her.

And then the room felt tense as if they both realised. As if they both wanted to move forward. “There’s something I need to tell you,” Sara said, her hand dropping away. She looked almost…sad then. No not sad, it looked…regretful. The way someone looked at someone when you had bad news.

“Do I want to hear it?”

Sara didn’t reply, her lips were pressed as she tried to find the words and whatever they were, suddenly, Alex didn’t want them. They were going to be bad and whatever was passing between them at the moment had been good.

She could feel Sara’s hand on her leg, where it had dropped down to rest, fiddling with the material of her shorts. It felt hot, like it almost burned through the material.

“I guess…” Sara spoke. “It depends how we feel about each other.”

Maybe it wasn’t bad, then. Maybe it was Sara trying to get clarification, Alex thought as she looked at the woman gather her words. She watched Sara’s chest rise as sucked in a breath, ready to continue. To say the words or ask the question or something.

Alex felt her own heartbeat in the hesitation, it was a slow, heavy thud-thud in between the moment where Sara took a breath, before she spoke. She could see Sara’s lips curving around the beginning of a letter that made Alex so sure she knew what was about to be said. That this was a dream, this wasn’t real.

This was her dream.

This was hers.

So she stopped the words from coming out.

And Alex kissed Sara.

It was a sudden, pressing kiss that felt as if all of time held its breath as she waited for Sara to kiss back, to respond in some way.

But she didn’t in that moment. Nor in the next.

Alex dropped back, realising her error in presumption. Not moments before had Sara looked as though she wanted to be anywhere so as long as is involved not being awake, and now Alex had made a go at kissing her.

“I ––“ Alex hesitated to explain, though she didn’t know what to say except that she had seen Sara’s hesitation, asking about their feelings, and thought _I want to kiss her so she knows,_ and she had. It wasn’t logical, but at the time, she had through Sara’s flirting was laying down the foundation for further moves and Alex had…kinda wanted to start up where they had finished off the other night. Real or not.

But as she looked at the stunned expression on Sara’s face, Alex realised that they wouldn’t be picking that up. Because Sara didn’t look pleasantly surprised, or relieved or anything good. She looked morbid. Like someone had died. “Oh,” Alex said, the sound coming out as if there from her lungs had expelled out her entire breath.

“Alex,” Sara tried to say, a whine to her voice asking her to stay, wait, _let me explain_ , but it was too late. Alex hand pulled from hers as she chose to awaken, finding herself once again trying to say _I’m fine_ as the dream slipped away and Sara fell into darkness, and she awoke to the quiet of the 4a.m. hour.

After Maggie, she had thought that rejection couldn’t hurt nearly as much as it had that first time. The very first time when she’d just come out to accept herself and she’d been past off as only a friend.

But it did. It still hurt just as much as that first time and she didn’t understand why.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe, this could be enough

J’onn had come to a decision about the CIA chatter after thinking over it for the next few days: extra precautions. Alex and Winn were going to go up and act as backup recon to the crew. They were going to go ahead of time and neither the CIA nor the DEO agents were to be made aware (not including J’onn and Agent Merkel, who were both some of the highest ranking superiors Alex had in the DEO, anyway, so it made sense).

Alex had been anxious about the idea. Though she loved a good field mission, the idea that it was away from her recruits _and_ Supergirl made her feel antsy about it. Still, when J’onn brought her in for the briefing with Merkel, she realised it wasn’t because J’onn had asked her to be there. It was because of Merkel.

“You and I don’t do missions often. But you have a good head, you take and give orders well and you don’t lose it when the mission goes sideways. If I want anyone on my back, it’s you.”

“Thank you, Ma’am.”

Merkel didn’t offer any smile. Her face was perpetually frown, eyes crinkled as if she was always critically evaluation what was in front of her. “Don’t let it go to your head,” was all she said, before leaving. Alex didn’t have a clue what she meant by that. From a compliment?

Going away, and given only a few days notice, meant she had to handover her lesson plans to Vasquez, who would be taking over for the two weeks. Vasquez had met her recruits a few times, as representative of the Comms crew, but she had also once been Alex’s right hand and it felt right to give it to her. After-all, they’d both been field agents together before Vasquez separated to communications.

Before Vasquez took over entirely, she did the one thing she’d put off and met Nilo face-to-face. At this stage, it was obvious she’d singled him out. It took time to go over the meaning of Sara’s words and place that in the frame of her own work. On one hand, she could mark his records, on the other, that would tarnish his ability if she was able to change that. She couldn’t unmark his records once it was there.

Eventually, she came to a decision as she sat in the small training room, facing Nilo across a table as the others worked on a few exercises she left them with.

“So,” she began, looking over the notes she drafted for the one-on-one. “What do you think I should be saying?”

Nilo’s mouth parted, before he shook his head and shrugged, his arms folding in front of him. “You tell me.”

Alex raised her eyebrow and waited.

“Ma’am,” he added, though it came out strained. She waited a few more moments and then watched as facade crumbled. “Look, I thought I did well, but then you act as if I kicked your dog on that day. And then you avoid me for a day, couldn’t even meet my eyes! You even spoke to Saunders _days ago_ and she abandoned us to go on and do her own thing. I expected that you were going to kick her out. We all did after that stunt, but you kept her and now I get shafted with this shit.”

Alex drew in a breath, abandoning her notes. “Do you know what the point of the mission was?” she asked. Nilo shrugged. “The _point_ was that I gave you a mission to get a dossier with overwhelming numbers. If you chose to go in on level two, everyone from level three would have come at your back. The same was meant to happen when you skipped two to go to three. If you hadn’t done level one correctly, it would have been more numbers on your six. Do you want to know what happened instead?”

Nilo blinked, surprised. “So, it was a suicide mission. That’s why the information was wrong.”

“Yes,” Alex said. “For two reasons. One, to teach you that you’re going to go in blind more often than not, and two, to teach you to retreat. But you didn’t retreat, you risked your team for out-dated intel.”

“That was just a prop though, eh?”

“I said to treat the entire mission as if it was real, that included what was in the dossier. You think that I couldn’t have spent the five needed minutes to typed up some pseudo current intel instead of manually printing pages of intel, that I had to get signed off on by people way above your authority, to place in?” A lot of the information wasn’t really meant for the general public, but neither was it hidden from them anymore.

“You…” he trailed off, the words sticking in his throat. “How was I supposed to know that?”

“Tell me this, then,” Alex said. “Say it was real intel. Say it was intel that was important. Would you ask your team to risk their lives, knowing that if they get caught, you won’t go back for them?”

“Maybe!” he said, “is that why we’re here. National security from the unknown.”

“Okay,” she shrugged, “What if I lead you. If told you that if you go in there with me, and you fall down, I will leave you there to be handed over to the enemy. Would you follow me through hell?”

An argument rose and died on his face as his shoulders slackened. “Maybe,” he tried, “I mean, if it’s worth it.”

“Then you’re not doing it for me, are you?” She leant forward across the table. “Look at me. Nilo, you and all those recruits. If I take you in, I will get you out if there’s even the single chance you’ll make it, I do that because I need you to know that I would never ask anything more of you or my team that I would not ask of myself.”

“I didn’t see her,” he said. “I mean, maybe, but not really.”

That dishonestly gave way to a rage inside of Alex. “You want to know what I saw? Because I must have been over that footage at least ten time, and I don’t see how you could have missed Warren. She’d be shot in the leg and you left her there so you could run out with the dossier. You left Saunders behind, by herself to die because she disobeyed an order. If that simulation had been real, Saunders probably was the difference between a slaughter and most of your team getting out alive. She was twice the person you were in that simulation, that’s why she’s still here.”

Nilo’s face crumbled before he turned away as a flush of red struck through him. Although the expression was slowly shifting to fury, Alex knew him well enough to know that there was more to it. Rather than poke at him for a response, she looked away from him, so she could just see his expression from the corner of her eyes, and waited.

After a few moments, he cleared his voice and said, “So…I failed the mission.” And then, as he drew in a breath, he incredulously added, “But…I got what you asked for. I did what you said to do.”

“You didn’t check the information, you didn’t verify that it was the correct one, you left your team behind and you risked all their lives,” she began before softening her voice. “You began so well and then I think you got carried away with trying to win. Look, Nilo, I want you to become a leader. I think you’d be great, but if you are to become a C.O. you need to start thinking about your team, they will live and die for you because they need to believe that you’ll get them out, if you can’t do that, they will turn on you so fast that you’ll either die, or worse, become one of the people we keep in the DEO basement locked up. That’s the big take-away from this.”

Nilo nodded, though he’d lost the swagger and pride he’d walked in with. “I don’t think I can,” he said as he lifted his head to meet her eyes. “I’m not cut out ––“

“Yes you are,” Alex affirmed. “This is your first year in training, you have _years_ before being a C.O. will even be on the table and you have a lot of work to do. But if you listen to your team, if you work with them, if you actually meet them as their equal and lead, _then_ you’ll be great. Stop looking out for just yourself. You’re not alone any more.”

Nilo drew in a deep breath and nodded, holding eye contact this time, and Alex, for the first time, gave him a smile as she rose to her feet. “You’ve got this.”

“Okay.” He said, and then offered her a small smile in return. “Alright,” he said again, standing. “Thanks Agent Danvers. You’re all right.”

“Hell yeah I am.”

Alex made sure that he went back into the training room, before leaving her class in the hands of Vasquez to run over finer points of the mission with J’onn and Winn. She was confident in Agent Vasquez training technique. She’d be softer than herself, but not so much that the class forgot that she was their commanding officer.

Heading up another floor, she headed to the labs where J’onn and Winn were going over what gear to take for the mission.

“There you are,” Winn said as she came to stand beside him, just as he closed one of the larger surveillance gear packs. Alex gave a short, _don’t even try it_ expressions before looking to J’onn.

“What do the others think we’re up to?”

“Recon mission in Florida, half-forced holiday,” J’onn explained. “Merkel’s aware that you’ll be up with them, but the less that people know, the better. When’s the soonest that you’re able to leave?”

“Tonight,” Alex said. She could leave sooner, but night gave Winn enough time to get things ready, as well as allow her inform Kara that she’ll be out of town for a bit. Though she knew her sister could handle herself, it was comforting to know that while she was going through a volatile tile, J’onn and James would keep an eye on her.

“I can…also do tonight,” Winn said. “I’ll need to run by and make J- some friends aware. Feed my fish and all that. How long will we be gone?”

“As long as it takes,” J’onn said. “The auction is expected to happen in six days, but Merkel runs the shots. She’ll keep you both up to date.” Alex nodded, she expected it to take a week, probably even two, which meant little contact back home while she sorted that out.

“So….are we flying up?” Winn asked.

“Not unless you can get weapons and surveillance gear on a domestic flight,” J’onn said, his voice laced with just enough irony to drive the point.

“No, I just thought…” and Winn trailed off, probably realising that if they took one of the DEO planes then they wouldn’t be “undercover” for very long. “Right, got it. We’re taking one of the SUV’s, aren’t we?”

“The silver one, so you will both blend in.”

Winn frowned, looking between J’onn and Alex. “Seriously?” he asked. Alex nodded, the SUV blended right in with traffic. There was always a dozen on the road at any given time and They’ll look like a couple going on holidays up north. No one would be one the wiser.

“Good, you two get sorted and meet back by six tonight to head out.”

Alex nodded, a quick, “Yes sir,” as response, just as Win opened his mouth, looking as though there was a dozen questions at the tip of his tongue. Alex shared a brief look with J’onn before heading out, leaving him to handle Winn. There were time when Alex was vividly aware that Winn hadn’t gone through the same rigorous training program that the other agents had. Though he was just as much a part of the team than anyone else, and she wouldn’t have it any other way, Winn’s ease at talking back and questioning C.O.’s direct orders was often something that rubbed at her.

Probably because Alex had been in trouble more than a few times for talking back or disobeying. She’d learnt when and where to hold her tongue, whereas Winn didn’t have to learn the necessity of that self discipline.

Leaving the lab, Alex tied off a few loose threads at work, before checking out weapons and a science kit from the labs. She also took one of the kevlar vests, moving them all to the silver SUV they’d be taking on mission.

It was early afternoon when she went home and packed her bags, taking clothes that were less Alex Danvers, and more Kara. Pastels and cardigans, no one would look at her and think that she was anyone on a mission to prevent a black market auction from happening. Bag packed with most necessities, Alex changed out of her work clothes and into jeans and a t-shirt so she didn’t appear to conspicuous as she went to visit her sister.

Before she dropped in on CatCo Media, she picked up a bag of cinnamon doughnuts and coffees to take to her sister, feeling guilty at the idea of leaving her. She wasn’t Kara’s keeper, and technically she probably needed more protected than Supergirl, given the lack of bulletproof-ness, but it still felt like her responsibility.

One day they would both be ninety, sitting in rocking chairs on a porch and Alex would still feel the need to be Kara’s protector.

Down in the CatCo lobby, she spoke the receptionist staff who lead her into the elevator, advising her of what floor Kara’s office was on. It wasn’t the first time she’d been at CatCo, but she wasn’t sure that she’d been there under good terms before.

She ran into James on her way to Kara’s desk, who shot her a confused look. “Day off?” he asked.

“Sort of,” she answered. “I’m sure Winn will get you up to speed,” she explained briefly. At Kara’s desk, she found her sister furiously talking to Lena Luthor –– a woman, who despite Alex’s original beliefs, had proven to be worthy of Kara’s friendship. As Kara spoke, Lena appeared utterly involved in the conversation, though she said little, allowing Kara to babble on, her hands move in conversation, adjusting her glasses at the end of her point before Lena said something that begun Kara off a new tangent again.

“–– said that statistics of human weapon violence far outweighs Alien. I mean, if you look at Australia, Japan, even Canada, there’s this…” and Kara trailed off, catching sight of Alex. “What are you doing here?” she asked, before seemingly to realise how rude that sounded. “Not that it’s not good to see you, just that I didn’t expect to see you here. Is Mum okay?”

“Mum’s fine. I just came to say that I’m going away for a few days and if you could collect mail for me for a for that time?”

Kara’s mouth parted to say something, before remembering that talking openly about Alex’s work wasn’t something she should be doing in a public space, not that Lena nor James weren’t aware of her work.

“Ms Danvers,” Lena said warmly. “It’s good to see you.”

“You too,” Alex returned before turning to her sister. “I brought doughnuts and coffee,” she said in way of offering, handing the bag over. Her sister leapt on the doughnuts, scoffing one in her face before delightedly announcing that they were still warm.

“How long will you be gone for?”

“Two weeks, probably.”

“Probably,” Kara repeated. “Alex…”

“Two weeks, maybe even less,” she said again, filling her voice with optimism. “Winn’s coming with me, but you’ll still have James, Lena and J’onn,” she said, giving Kara a smile.

“And Sam,” Lena added.

“Yes, and Sam,” she agreed.

“I know, I just…can’t I come?”

“No, this is a work thing,” Alex said. If Supergirl started appearing up in the North, saving kittens from trees, it wouldn’t take long before anyone from the DEO began to realise that Alex was trailing around as back-up to her nearly everywhere. No, she had to do it with just her and Winn. Old school. “You’ll hardly notice that I’m gone.”

“What about our pizza and pot-sticker night?” Kara asked.

“I’m sure Lena would be an appropriate substitute. Right?” she asked, looking at the woman, whose smile blossomed at the mention of it.

“Of course. We can make a night of it, or keep it as relaxed as you would like,” she said, the hint of an Irish accent seeping through as it always seemed to when she grew excited around Kara. Alex was someone who probably didn’t count herself as having the greatest “gay-dar”, but both her and Maggie had come to same conclusion that Lena was crushing hard on Kara. Whether romantically or out of awestruck admiration was another thing entirely, but there was certainly something starstruck in the way that Lena looked at her.

“Thanks Lena,” Kara said, and there was a warmth in her voice that eased a worry Alex didn’t realise she had until then. Whatever Kara was working on had certainly eased her soul. That was something, at least.

“Do you have my keys?” she asked.

“Yep. I’ll grab your mail, and use up anything in your fridge that’ll expire.”

“And leave my clothes on my hangers after what you did to my last dress,” she warned, remembering all to well at finding the broken zipper in her closet as Kara pretended it didn’t happen before immediately admitting to it the moment Alex had spoken to her about it.

“I’ll do my best,” Kara said. “But I got the zipper fixed, at least.”

Alex kept her mouth shit, biting back a comment about how the new zipper had never been the same since. She had to get someone else to zip it up, or struggle with a mixture of tools and yoga positions to zip it up. For all that effort, she just bought a new dress instead.

And then promptly had ripped that at Barry and Iris’ wedding.

God, she didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t have time to think about _that_ or anyone related to _that_ wedding party.

“Alright,” she said, giving her sister a quick hug. “Thank you. I will see you in two weeks.J’onn will keep you up to date.”

“Wait, you’re going on radio silence?” Kara asked.

Alex pulled back and pressed her lips shut, even though Lena was doing a very good job at pretending to be interested in talking to James about the upcoming launch. “It’s important,” was all she said. “I’ll explain it to you when I get back.”

“Okay,” Kara agreed, the double syllable coming out tight with a scrunch of Kara’s brow. “But the moment you get back, you come and visit me.”

“Sure thing _Mum_ ,” Alex teased, giving her sister another hug. She gave James and Lena a briefer goodbye, before heading back over to Winn’s apartment.

His apartment was two suburbs over, in a good area, nicer than the one Alex was in. There, Winn was ready with his big, navy blue suitcase as if they were planning a holiday.

“Got enough things?” she asked.

“Yep, everything I’ll need,” he nodded, perhaps unaware of the sarcasm in her voice. “Is that all you’re taking?” he asked, looking at her bag. It was a decent size bag that she had slung over her shoulder. Inside of it were the clothes and toiletries she’d need for a mission that she wouldn’t be able to get upstate. All of her weapons and the few other things she might need were all packed away in the car that J’onn was bringing over. She reiterated as much to Winn who then asked if she’d brought any materials like books or magazine to read while they’d be driving, as he had brought an audiobook for the car.

Alex gave him a strange look, but before she could explain that there was no way she would be listening to his audiobook, J’onn arrived.

“Here,” he said, handing over the keys to Alex with two burner phones, and two sets of wallets that contained enough cash, as well as an emergency-only credit card, to keep them out of trouble. It was a small mission and yet Winn was still amazed at the effort that had to be taken to get them ready.

If Alex was being honest, undercover missions always amazed her.

“Merkel will be calling you around seven o’clock each night with any updates you might need to know. Given the nature of the situation, I would advice against contacting her unless you need to.” Alex nodded.

“Man, I can’t believe we’re going on a mission together. Crazy right?” Winn asked.

Alex gave him a look, finding herself only partially annoyed and somewhat endeared by Winn’s enthusiasm for the situation.

“Look after him,” J’onn said and Alex smiled as Winn began to protest that he would be fine, before slowly admitting that given previous circumstances, he wasn’t entirely against having Alex there.

With no more than a single nod and a short goodbye, Alex and Winn went to the SUV and placed their bags away before getting into the car, Alex moved behind the wheel, with Winn calling ‘DJ’ as they headed out of National City, towards the North. It was to be a long trip –– two-day trip, not including stops –– to get to where they needed to be.

“We should get a motel in Haven’s Point,” Winn said as he looked through the paper map, despite the car’s GPS system that Alex use to key in the destination.

“We’ll just sleep in the car,” Alex said. “It’ll be faster.”

“That’s a lot of driving, Alex. Don’t you want to stop and shower, sleep in a bed to just break it up.”

“We’ll do that when we arrive. We need to get there before the CIA and DEO get into position.”

“We already know when and where there going to be, and J’onn already told us everything he knew.”

Alex kept quiet, her mouth a thin line. She had a gut instinct that this mission was going to go south for the DEO. It wasn’t a kept secret that the only reason the CIA had decided to work with them this time was because they knew that the DEO’s field agents had a more intricate understanding of alien languages than they could.With Kara often being the modern-day rosetta stone, they were able to be leagues beyond the CIA in terms of code breaking extraterrestrial information. It left the department, who had previously considered themselves the leading experts in xenology, appearing partially incompetent.

Not to mention that the DEO was the reason that they knew where the auction was happening in the first place. It would make sense that the CIA may be resentful for needing to work with them. Still, it seemed ridiculous to risk the partnership because of their pride.

“Can you go over _exactly_ what you heard on the chatter?”

“Again?” Winn asked. “Haven’t you heard it a hundred times?”

“Again,” she said.

With a sigh, Winn repeated the conversation again, verbatim, if with an unnecessary pizzaz in the voice. It was the same thing, over and over. Alex had listened to the recorded conversation herself, and had drawn the same conclusion that Winn had. The CIA were planning to double cross them and, that there was something unsaid. Something important that they were missing, though there seemed to be no additional clues in the speech that she could decipher.

As they travelled deep into the night, Alex mind wound over and over the conversation, trying to remember the exact words and tone used by the agents. There had to be something there to uncover. Some puzzle piece that would bring it all together.

She knew the mechanics of how Winn had caught the chatter, but were the CIA that easy to slip up. One wrong conversation held over one wrong radio chatter? It seemed far too simple — and yet, Alex of all people knew that agencies had been caught over less.

Drawing out an exhale, she drummed her fingers across the steering wheel and found her mind replaying the conversation again, anyway, Beside her, Winn had fallen asleep. When Alex had refused to listen to his audiobook, he’d placed his headphones on and drifted on to sleep listening to some podcast. This had of course been after he had first nattered about car games and then nagged her about finding a motel, but eventually had given up on both points. Maybe, in a few hundred more miles, Alex would think about pulling the car over and folding the backseats down. Maybe.

They could still get plenty of sleep by taking turns driving.

The first switch happened after they stopped to fill up the car. They were seven hours closer to the destination and over halfway through the night. As she paid for gas, she bought Winn an energy drink and a packet of chips. They’d be a good way away from a decent meal for a while and she didn’t trust roadside hot food after the time she got food poisoning when she’d been sixteen.

“Do you mind if I…?” he asked, pointing to the auxiliary chord.

Alex nodded, allowing him to finally, plug in his device and continue his audiobook. With her own pillow, Alex curled up in the seat and closed her eyes as the cottonwool of her thoughtsbecame nothing more than a soft buzz.

She opened her eyes to the Waverider, but it wasn’t within Sara’s room. Rather, she found herself in the strange circular room that looked to have been stolen from a museum exhibition. Bits and pieces scattered among cabinets and walls. Knick-knacks were placed randomly over a large table that laid in the middle of the room, on display but in no sensical order. Behind the table, in a tall, cushioned chair,Sara’s head lifted, eyes pulling open before she began to push out of the chair with no apparent strained muscles or awkwardness.

“Doesn’t look like a comfortable place to sleep,” Alex said.

‘I’m only napping,” Sara shrugged. “Things to see, people to do and all that.”

Alex nodded, looking around the space at all the objects taken from time, the maps and paintings that spoke of another era. It didn’t feel like a space created by Sara, but rather one that had been collected and held by someone who had been trying to hold onto mementoes from their travels.

“Alex,” Sara’s voice pulled. “Look, about the other night.”

Alex froze at the very mention of the previous embarrassment. She’d been doing a very good job over the last day in pretending it hadn’t happened. “It’s okay,” she said, looking to face Sara. “I made a mistake. I misread ––“

“You didn’t misread anything.”

Alex paused, waiting then for what was probably going to be a _it’s not you, it’s me_ conversation that she’d rather not have at all.

“It’s because I’m seeing someone,” Sara said, laying it out. “I know that this might just be some dumb dream, but at the same time, I think we both know that there’s something more to it than just that, no matter what Gideon says.”

Alex swallowed in the pause while Sara waited for her response. The woman looked somewhere between defensive and struggling to be open. Her lips were pursed and there was tension around her eyes, but Alex could see in her posture that she was _trying_ to be fair to her.

“So you’re seeing someone else,” Alex prompted, “and…” _That would mean you were cheating on them_ , she omitted. “How recent is it?”

“After the cabin, but before the other night.” Sara explained, looking away. “It’s recent-recent, and we haven’t spoken about… but I don’t want to screw it up. And…” she trailed off and met Alex’s eyes. “I mean, it wasn’t fair to you either. You deserved to know about Ava.”

“Ava,” Alex echoed aloud, before adding, “Well, she-she sounds nice. I mean, she must be…special, to…” and then Alex trailed off, feeling the hand she used to emphasis _special_ with fall flat by her side. “I’m glad you found someone,” she finished off.

“Thank…you?” Sara questioned with a strange look and a laugh.

It was a laughable thing, and Alex knew that Sara was teasing her but all she could manage in return was a weak smile. Her heart gave a squeeze. It didn’t feel like a standard rejection, not really, it felt…like when she was in college and she found out her study group had a regular Thursday night at the bar that she’d never been invited to. A part of her felt angry and wanted to immediately dislike whoever _Ava_ was, but Alex was old enough to know that that wasn’t fair to whomever the woman was, and Sara was only trying to reduce the amount of hurt and pain between them all. But the anger didn’t hush inside of her, no matter the reason in her thoughts.

“Did you tell her about me?” Alex asked.

“Yes and no,” Sara said. “Not about the dreams.”

“But about the wedding,” Alex nodded, feeling the anger creep into her voice, before she pushed it down. It wasn’t like she’d been telling anyone about her dreams. “What did you mean before, when you said ‘despite what Gideon says’?”

Sara blinked, before folding her arms against her chest. “Gideon can monitor our dreams. She’s a bit of a voyeur sometimes. Anyway, after the first two nights I asked if she could monitor my dreams, but, of course, I was stranded in time for a few days, so that didn’t work out. When I finally _did_ come back, Gideon said that she couldn’t see any evidence of the dreams I spoke of. The dreams with you.”

“The ones where you came to my apartment?”

Sara nodded. “Don’t exist, apparently. Which makes me think I’m crazy, _however_ , Gideon pointed out that I’ve been having some other dreams that make more sense than this, whatever this is but I don’t recall having them. So, unless…”

“Something else is going on. Such as you’re brain is still showing signs of activity, but a part of you is…here.”

“Bingo.”

“Otherwise, this doesn’t exist.” Alex paused, chewing over the idea to work out what could cause that. For the body to still be there, while the mind wandered. It made little sense. “Do you really think that…in some way you’re still dreaming, but a part of you is astral projecting across another universe?”

Sara shrugged. “It’s not a completely crazy idea.”

“None of that makes sense,” Alex pointed out. “None of this makes sense anyway.”

“Look, astral projection is honestly the least of my worries at this point,” Sara shrugged, tossing her a quick smile. There were a hundred different points in science that Alex wanted to pull out as examples in how astral projection _couldn’t_ be an option, but Sara’s eased smile, the way she looked as if none of that really mattered, was a seductive way of thought.

Alex frowned. “This is real, isn’t it? In some way, it has to be… _real_.”

“I guess it depends on your definition of real.” Sara tried, and then shook her head. “I don’t know, I don’t know if you are real and I have no way of proving it if I want to so I’ll just take it at face value at this point until we can work out a reason why it isn’t.”

“We could always…visit each other. Somewhere?” Alex suggested.

“You come to my universe and I drag my team to meet you?” Sara asked. “Look, I want this to be real, it’ll make things a lot less complicated if it is,” before she added, “or more complicated. But I can’t drag my team away from what we’re doing at the moment, it’s too big.”

Sara hadn’t intended to be rude, Alex knew that, but the blunt way she said it still stung against her pride.

“I wasn’t suggesting that for now,” she said, hearing the defence in her words as loudly as if she had crossed her arms against her chest. “I wouldn’t be able to do anything for the next few weeks anyway. I’m nowhere near Kara or the cross-universe device. I just…look, I’m a scientist first. Something strange happens, apart of me will always want to rationalise it.”

“And if it’s magic?”

“There’s no such thing,” Alex said.

Sara looked taken aback, as if she couldn’t quite read her before she laughed. “You’re kidding right. All this crap and you draw the line at magic?”

“There’s no such thing,” she affirmed. “Look if I take my gun back to ancient civilisation, they’ll think it’s magic for shooting down something from afar, but that’s just because they don’t understand it. Magic is just a word for the unknown, to simply it rather than search for answer.”

“Well, I can’t say much to that,” Sara responded and a quiet fell between them, before she turned away, going over to the corner to pour two glasses of scotch into what looked like a very nice set of crystal glasses.

As the sound of pouring liquid filled the empty space in their conversation became almost unbearable, Sara asked, “so…you’re out of the office, I take it?”

“Recon,” Alex nodded. “So, nothing too exciting yet. Just back-up.”

“Huh. Aliens?”

“Sort of, more…CIA.”

“Oh…kay,” Sara turned around, handing one of the glasses over, before she leant against a table filled with an assortment of maps and star-charts. “Aren’t you guys branched off from the CIA…or Homeland or whatever?”

Alex shoulders eased as the conversation moved to somewhere more comfortable. Emotionally speaking. “No, we’re branched off from the military, directly.”

“I thought you guys were like a CIA, FBI crossover team for outer space.”

Alex gave a short laugh. “It’d be so much easier if we were. The DEO was originally constructed as a secret defence subsection against extraterrestrial life. Our funding was structured around the dependency to prevent alien attacks once the government realised they were taking an interest in Earth. But since the President’s an alien, now, we can focus less on being a military defence force, and more for being sort of like a government agency, protecting Earth and minimising threats before they become bigger problems, solving alien murders. Neutralising terrorist attacks with the use of Alien weapons. All that fun.”

“Like ARGUS.” Sara nodded, though there was a look in her eye as she took a sip of whiskey. “Did I hear you say that the American president is an alien?” She questioned. “People must _love_ that.”

“They don’t know. She’s an American citizen, been here since she was young, it gets iffy around her birth but I liked her more than the other guy, and she does a lot of good.”

She watched Sara nod, it wasn’t quite flabbergasted, but the look was certainly one that had a stunned element to it as she drew the drink to her lips. “Strange,” she whispered against the glass.

“It’s not that strange. J’onn’s an alien too, after-all.”

“He’s your boss, right? Isn’t that like some conflict of interest?”

Yes, definitely, Alex thought. But she shrugged instead. After all, J’onn was the best man for the job, capable of just as much, if not more empathic than Kara with his telepathic ability. And yet, his history of war and the lessons learnt of the cost of complacent in the face of evil made him the most pragmatic choice of Alien Defence.

“So, where are you now, then? On a plane?”

“No, driving. Well, Winn’s driving, I’m clearly not at this moment, otherwise there would be much, much bigger problems at hand.” Despite the terrible attempt at humour, Sara smiled at her. It lit up her whole face and Alex could see as plainly as the freckles on her skin, that Sara Lance thought she was a dork.

“Well, at least you’re getting sleep,” she said.

“For the moment. What about you, this can’t be a good place to sleep.”

Sara shook her head, a small laugh at something. In response Alex took a sip of her own whiskey and looked around the room again, eyeing the memorabilia to find a new start to the suddenly dropped conversation. It definitely wasn’t at all awkward as it happened for the second time in what seemed to be as many minutes. And Alex definitely wasn’t tossing between if she should she wake up or if should she say something about the previously mentioned partner –– Ava –– or was that weird?

It was probably weird. Maybe she should…

“Have you ever met anyone else here, in this…plane of existence?” Sara asked.

“No, have you?”

“Not _here_. These dreams seemed to be centred entirely on meeting you,” Sara said, using her index finger to point at Alex, flirtation lilting her voice. “But who knows. You could be Mallus all along. Which would have been…weird considering the other night. But what isn’t weird in my life at the moment.”

“Who’s Mallus?”

Sara scrunched up her nose. “Just some big bad,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. Legends are on it.” Alex found herself letting out short exhale as she came face-to-face with a classic trademarked Sara smile. “Then maybe we can find some moment to meet up.”

_Unrelenting_ , she thought to herself, and yet she felt that Sara knew how to speak without some sardonic charm or flirt. It was almost like a brittle facade from something else it wasn’t an insecurity but a defence, nonetheless.

“Are you _analysing_ me?”

“Always.”

“Well…don’t.”

“Well don’t you do it either,” Alex retorted with as much maturity as Sara had.

“Fine, I’ll just take my _psychoanalysing_ back to the nap I was happening.”

Alex blinked, and then without a beat asked, “Is Mallus the reason you’re sleeping in a chair and not in the comfort of your bed?”

Sara sobered as she answered, “Partially. Didn’t really mean to be sleeping. I was working,” Sara said, gesturing to what Alex had been taken as general clutter, to be an assortment of books and highlighted notes. Bending over the table to flick through the information Alex noted the different groups of handwritings, probably from the research-orientated members of the team. There was scrawled handwriting in black ink, a tidy block writing in blue and red, and one she took to be, due to the violet pen being used to make coded shorthand, to be Sara’s. The shorthand had probably been out of habit, the code its self was intentional.

“You should get sleep, in a real bed while it’s nearby,” she said, looking up from the notes.

“Thanks _Mum_ , but I’ve slept rough before. And not _just_ because I slept in a mountain,” Sara pointed out before Alex could say it.

“No, you used to go camping,” she drolly responded.

Sara’s jaw dropped with a soft gasp as she shook her head. Despite the scowl on her lips, Alex could see Sara’s eyes sparkling as she said, “Wow. I won’t share anything with you if you keep saying it back to me in that tone.”

“What tone?” Alex asked with mock-surprise. “I’m just stating facts as they were laid out to me before.”

“Mmhmm, sure. I am a former assassin I’ll have you know. One who doesn’t like to be mocked by cross-universe travellers.”

“And I’m an agent of the DEO,” Alex responded. “Trained in interrogation as well as defensive manoeuvres against would-be assassins.”

Sara’s mouth was attempting to remain a straight line but quirked in amusement giving a soft flicker to Alex’s belly before that twisted like a sudden knife had struck her.

The flirtation and joking was fun, fun enough that Alex found her heart beating hard as she looked at Sara and remembered that she had a girlfriend. That she wasn’t available. That Sara and her now had to share dreamscape and pretend that it wasn’t at least a little bit awkward that they had been an almost, a once-was.

She also had to remember that Sara wasn’t _real_.

Something must have visibly shown across her face as the amusement in Sara’s face died away, giving to a soft frown as she began fiddling with her drink whilst leaning against the table in the centre of the room that had a mess of maps, her eyes moving to look anyway but at Alex. Perhaps she realised too.

“So recon?” Sara asked to shuffle the conversation along.

“Mhmm,” Alex responded. “Got the big guns.”

“Is that so? Bet they couldn’t beat Cisco’s brain-child weapons.”

Alex gave a false head nod. “I don’t know, it is Alien technology. Cisco’s good, but he’s not a thousand years ahead of us in science, Alien-tech good. Even Winn is impressed.”

“I don’t know Winn well enough to know what that means, but I feel like alien technology is definitely cheating.”

“Well, I’ve always cheated at cards, so…”

“Now that is evil. The very sanctity of cards…” and then Sara smiled at her and Alex though, maybe…maybe this could be real, and they could be friends. She could forget about the other night, forget about the kisses and the wedding night and the way Sara’s hands ran over her skin and how Alex hadn’t thought about Maggie in so long.

She could forget all of that, and just smile and enjoy this moment.

Because it was enough.

Maybe, it could be enough.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex believed them to be two sides of the same coin.

Alex awoke feeling bittersweet from the dream. There was a pang in her heart for something lost, though she’d never had it to begin with. Like all the dreams of Sara, it felt something that had happened last week. Her memories didn’t slip away like a real dream, but they felt distant. The wounds in her heart didn’t.

“What’s with the face?” Winn asked.

Alex looked over at him, her mouth parting with a lie ready on her tongue, but it was as if the words turned to ash. “Just a dream.”

“Oh,” Winn said, nodding his head. “Look, I know it’s hard for you, with… And I don’t have much experience there, but…but for what it’s worth, you made the right decision.”

Alex gave an incredulous look, before the meaning of his words hit her. _Maggie_ , she realised and fell that all too familiar feeling of longing. Maggie who had felt warm and safe. Maggie, who’d she been prepared to marry, easily. She missed her, and yet, she didn’t feel the wave of heartbreak come rolling over.

Had her heart caught up with her brain at last?

“It’s not about Maggie,” she said. “But…thank you.”

Winn showed off a smile before looking at the GPS app he had open. The highway was relatively straight and they were managing to keep out of the cities, sticking to roadside cafés for the time being. Still, they were only day one, edging on day two, and she could already tell that Winn was exhausted.

“Pull over at the next stop. I’ll take over.”

“What? No, it’s been like four hours.”

“You’re more tired than I am. The next stop is in twenty miles, just…pull over. We’ll re-fuel and stack up on coffee.”

As it was, Winn allowed her to take over, and Alex drove for another twelve hours before switching again to squeeze in more sleep. Between the both of them, Alex could fall into a deep sleep for a few hours, waking refreshed to take over and Winn could fall into a shallower one for almost six hours whilst listening to whatever playlist, podcast or audiobook he was up to, coming out of it groggy, but ready for a few more hours.

In the rest of the trip, Alex dreamt of Sara only once more. Sara was…quieter. In the dream, they drank and spoke snippets of their lives as they sat in the same room, Sara having fallen asleep at the table again –– though she assured her it that she had since slept in a bed. “More than I can say,” Alex told her.

It’d been received with a half smile, as Sara’s mind was far from present. Rather than pushing her to say what was happening, Alex poured her another drink and began telling her a story an embarrassing story about Kara recent discovery alien alcohol.

It felt like a lazy dream. One where the distant felt grander between them as whatever sat on Sara’s mind, continued to bother her.

Alex awoke as dawn was breaking. They were pulled over at a petrol station. The bright light must have awoken her, she thought, looking over to where Winn was at the counter, paying for gas. Getting out of the car, Alex stretched her legs, arching her back. Her ass was sore from sitting down for so long. She couldn’t wait to arrive at the hotel they’ll be staying at.

“You’re awake,” Winn said, handing her a coffee and a takeaway container of bacon and eggs. “Don’t worry, we’re still on schedule.”

Alex shook her head, stifling a yawn. “A meal that doesn’t come in a packet is important after so many days on the road.”

Winn nodded, taking a tomato sauce covered hot chip, and stuffing it into her mouth. “So important,” he echoed.

Alex shook her head, climbing into the driver’s seat as she took the keys from Winn. Her eyes stung from post-sleep exhaustion, but the roadside coffee, which tasted like tar, was doing a decent job of waking her up.

“How much further?” Winn turned to ask her. She looked at the maps app on her phone to see where they were at.

“Not much further. We’ll hit the border checkpoint today. Before then, we should stop and change to look like our cover.”

‘Right, husband and wife. Coming up for a wedding.”

“Exactly.” It was an easy enough cover. One that allowed Winn to shrug and play the guy who didn’t know much about anything, and gave room for Alex to lie as required. All Winn had to do was remember that his name in this was David Whyte, with her own being Rachel Whyte. They would just disappear in a sea of names with other people, dressed in bland clothes that didn’t stand out.

Alex had to forgo all her favourite jackets, sticking with a few jumpers she’d raided from Kara that would go well with a few pairs of “mum-jeans”, button up pastel shirts and sneakers. She even brought out the blonde wig to give her very image of middle-class woman who just wanted one weekend away from her kids.

Winn, however, dressed drown from his usual style, with a pair of baggy jeans, faded shoes and a plain, white medium t-shirt that he paired with a Make America Great Again cap. “No one will want to talk to me with this,” he said, pointing to his hat as he came out of the restroom. Alex noted that he’d also forgone shaving, giving an unkempt bristled look to his face that went well with his attire.

There they were, she had to admit, catching their reflection. They looked like another two middle class conservatives who thought that the world revolved around them alone.

Getting through the border was easy. They were stopped, their passports were looked at and then they were allowed through with a nod. The person’s smile seemed stiffer than Alex was used to, which was reiterated again when they checked in at their hotel a few hours later, having arrived in the city.

This wasn’t a conservative city, but Alex did notice that when people caught sight of Winn’s hat, most of them ducked their eyes away, not wanting to engage in any sort of conversation longer than necessary. A few, however, gave a small nod before moving on.

Excellent.

Alex and Winn moved their bags into the room. The bedroom, being a family room, had a king bed, kitchenette and a pull out sofa. Winn very gently requested the bed for his back, having twisted a muscle on the drive over. It didn’t bother her too much. The sofa mattress was surprisingly firm and comfortable as she tested it out for fifteen minutes as Winn set up his gear.

Alex set up her surveillance gear. They’d be relying on Merkel to get a bug in the room without the CIA knowing, but it was nothing the woman wasn’t experienced in.

“How long until they arrive?” Winn asked.

“The DEO was told to expect them tomorrow, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d be setting up base, soon,” she said. It wasn’t a hotel, like they were staying at, but rather a building marked down for demolition. Alex could already see that there workers in fluorescent yellow and orange walking around the building. It rose a red flag, as all the checks for the building should have been completed weeks ago by the construction crew and it wasn’t meant to be demolished until next week, the day after everyone was set to leave.

She watched the workers go around, some of them hanging out and chatting to one another as others moved materials around. Even with the telephonic lens she had, she could barely get a glimpse of what was going on inside the building.

However, Alex had spotted one of the side entrances they were using and had set up some of her gear to keep a watch there. After-all, they were only here as support. No doubt the DEO would be careful to watch the back entrances. But after a few minutes of watching, Alex put good money on the crew being CIA.

“So I get that we’re doing general surveillance to see if the CIA is sneaking about. But what about the take down that’s happening. How are we going to get access there?”

“You won’t,” Alex said. “I will be. J’onn gave us the blueprints of the map. We already know what the DEO will be doing, and Merkel will keep us up to date if there’s any last minute change of plans. Don’t worry about it. Go, have a shower and get some food for us.”

“I can keep watch,” he pointed out. “Besides, no offence Alex, but you’re just as much in need of a shower as I am.”

Alex knew it. She also was feeling the familiar thirst for a whiskey since it had been three days –– not including dreams –– since she’d had a drink. It’d been a while since she’d been on recon duties and had to suppress that need. She never drank on duty, she barely touched a drop while on call, but recon: endless waiting, staring, waiting, watching, waiting. Not even paperwork, just sitting still and staring through a lens…

It was meandering work at best, one she faced as someone else might have faced their tax obligations after it had built up for a few years.

“Go to the bathroom first. I’ll go in next.”

With only a brief hesitation, Winn took to the ensuite bathroom as Alex watched the alleged construction workers. They would need to get a better look. There was a coffee shop across the road on the western side that she could see. It’d be a good as place as any to get a better look.

After Winn came out, who appeared to have not taken a shower but maybe brushed his teeth or something, she took a shower and savoured the feeling of hot water and soap on her skin. Just having the shower made her feel more awake that a coffee, but nonetheless, she dressed again in her clothes, tucking her hair away in a cap before pulling the wig on. Then, she carefully applied make up until she was satisfied that no one would recognise her.

Winn did a double take at her as she came out of the bathroom whilst pulling a white, crocheted beanie onto her head for the added touch.

“You…look different as a blonde,” he said.

She smiled, feeling her lips slide against the gloss she’d applied. “Thanks David. I’m glad that you finally noticed.”

“That is…creepy. Does Kara know you can do that with your voice?”

Alex laughed, dropping her voice back to her own, natural pitch and tone. “Not really. Kara doesn’t tend to see me in any undercover roles.”

“No, that makes sense,” he said, nodding. “So, where are you off to looking like that, eh?”

Alex smiled at his attempt to dress his voice. “Coffee shop. You good to keep watch here?”

“Yep. Definitely. Bring me back one of those frappes?”

“Sure,” she said, shaking her head as she exited out of the room.

She went downstairs, exiting out of the lobby onto the street. It was a nice street, clean with a steady stream of people. There was the odd tree here and there, but mostly there were tall buildings. If Alex was to take a guess, she would say the demolitions site, only six stories tall, had been sold to some commercial entity that was looking to build taller buildings for either office spaces to lease out, or apartment complexes.

At the lights on the corner of the street, she made a small glance to crew at the site. Out the front of the demolition building there was what looked to be telecommunication engineers looking over a hole into where the fibre-optics were. Bright, yellow and black fencing was laid out around them as they dug around the telephone and internet cables, seemingly doing _something_.

Then, the pedestrian light flashed and she walked with the a group of others, all of them seemingly individuals in a crowd, rather than couples or groups, as they made their way to the other side of the road and then waited at the lights to get to cross over to what had been diagonal from her original lights.

She pulled out one of the burner phones J’onn have given her in a sleek, lavender case with all her undercover identity and “bank” cards that would be of no use if her phone was stolen.The ID was more for protocols. If something were to happen, even something as simple and terrible as her being hit by a car, as soon as her name was input with the DOB in her location, it would alert DEO that something had happened and they would probably need to cover it up.

The lights flashed and Alex made her way across to where the shop was. The coffee shop looked to be a small business. A quick glance over the options told her that Winn’s desired mocha frappe was _not_ going to be an option. They were a simple place, marketing as a healthier, organicoption with allergy-aware meals.

Going into the line, Alex made use of her phone by take a instagram worthy selfie to get a better look at the construction behind her. Nothing of immediate interest but she had a small view from the camera.

“Hi, how are you today?” the shop assistant asked as she arrived at the front of the line.

“Can I get two tall flat whites, full cream in both. One without sugar, one with two in a to-go cup, preferably with the takeaway holder?” She asked.

“S-sorry?” the woman said, caught off guard and having only taken down half of her order.

Alex repeated the order, slower with condescension lacing her tongue to fit in character. The woman, who had smiled so brightly in beginning, had dimmed by end of the transaction and a small pocked of guilt dripped down Alex’s throat. She wasn’t the first, nor would she be the last, rude customer. But she’d been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

It was one thing to be undercover, it was another to actually _be_ rude to a hospitality staff member. The woman, no older than twenty-five if she had to guess, with thick rimmed glass and a round face looked as if she was regretting her own existence.

Alex remembered face-to-face customer service work; it only served to make her feel more guilty as she realised that she’d been, well, a mega-bitch as she’d once bitched about her own customers back then.

Taking out cash, she handed over the requested amount over, before then placing an additional hundred-dollar bill, out of guilt, into the tip jar and walked away to the stand where everyone else was on their phones, waiting to hear their name or order called out by the barista.

She caught a glimpse of the woman’s pleased surprise as her eye noted the dollar amount on the note, and the woman’s expression seemed much less dimmed, though it certainly wasn’t as bubbly as it had been before. And really, what was a hundred dollars going to do in the long-end?

Alex knew she shouldn’t be careless, just in case someone here, or working in the café was undercover as well, but in all honesty, at the end of the day, she felt that giving the tip was the right thing to do.

When her coffee order was called out and handed over in a cardboard takeaway box, Alex had enough information for the moment on the site. She went back to the hotel, to where Winn was and gave him his coffee. “No mocha frappe’s, sorry.”

“Worth a try,” he shrugged, taking sip of the coffee and leaning back against the couch. “What did you find out?”

Alex took a sip of her own. It was made well, good coffee beans done by an experienced hand. Much better than the tar coffee she’d had that morning.

“They’ve already set up,” Alex told him. “We can still run surveillance, but they run a tight ship. It looks like they’ve been here a few days. I don’t know how they’re covering from the original construction crew, but it’s the CIA, so who really knows what they get up to.”

Winn nodded. “They’re probably bugging us back, somehow. Isn’t that what government agencies do. bug each other as much as we do it to the international and criminal people.”

Alex frowned. “Probably,” she said, taking another sip of coffee. “Anyway, go take a shower and we’ll work out shifts.”

Winn was in the shower close to forty-five minutes before he stepped out of the bathroom, bringing in a gust of hot steam along with his very pink self. Alex had to admire his dedication to the hot water, he looked like he had a light sun burn across his skin.

“So you drove last, I slept last, so you sleep first,” Winn decided.

“I can go without sleep longer than you.”

“So your shifts can be longer, who cares. But you should try to be as regular in sleep as possible before shit goes down.”

There, Alex found her own arguments weakened. She should sleep. Keep herself at least moderately rested to face whatever challenges were thrown at them. For next half hour, they discussed a decent twenty-four hour surveillance that allowed enough time for Winn to also do his thing while Alex overlooked the construction site. Bathroom breaks were factored in, much to Winn’s instance, and times to get food since they didn’t want the hotel staff seeing the surveillance gear set up.

After making sure the Do Not Disturb sign was hung out of the room, Alex set up the sofa bed for herself and climbed into it to find, with relief, that it was actually comfortable. Within moments she had drifted into dreams, and then her dreams eventually stopped as she awoke in the room to Sara looking at her surveillance.

“Where’s Winn?”

“Who?” Sara asked, taking a peek through her scope to across the road. Unless Alex had seriously overslept, it shouldn’t be this dark. There should have still been some light out.

“You met him, in that Nazi world. He was the guy who helped us.”

“Oh, haven’t seen him,” Sarah shrugged. “Guess you didn’t dream him into the space?”

It was probable, but in Sara’s world, she’d dreamt of Amaya and Ray. Though there was a good chance that they had actually been asleep, maybe she couldn’t faction in an awake Winn.

“You do have some nice goods,” Sara said, unlatching her sniper to get a look at it. “I once owned something like this, way back in my old life, but I prefer to be up close and personal now.”

“Up close and personal gives them a chance to fight. We’re trained to shoot to kill, not to mortally wound.”

“So was I,” Sara said. Her face was still as it met Alex’s and there was something there, not quite a reflection or a mirror, but something _familiar_ at least that made Alex realise that they weren’t all that different. Two sides of the same coin, maybe. Government agent versus assassin for hire, there was only a thin veil that really divided the two in terms of morality, Alex thought.

“I’m sorry,” Alex said. Sara eased, pushing away from the sniper to stand up.

“No harm done,” she said. “I guess neither of us really know what the other’s life was like.”

For a moment, Alex felt herself about to joke about Sara sleeping inside of a mountain again, before she realised that it wasn’t the time or place. Instead she sat back, quietly watching as Sara moved around the hotel room.

“No booze?” Sara asked.

“Nope. Recon duty involves me remaining dry.”

“Lame.” Sara shut the minibar, which had its alcohol removed at Alex’s request on the drive over. She knew herself too well to allow even a price tag marked up by 300% for a bottle of wine to remain in the room when she was this bored.

Not that she found herself bored as Sara threw herself on the king-sized bed and stretched out. “Nice bed, at least.”

“I’m glad you approve.” Sara offered a smile, but there was something brittle in its appearance. “Everything okay?” she asked.

“Peachy,” Sara responded.

Alex came and laid down beside Sara, folding her arms underneath her head as they both looked up at the ceiling. “How’s the whole thing with your team and Mallus?”

Sara was quite, her lips pursed as if she wanted to hold back the worlds before she looked up at Alex. “We have the death totem now,” she said.

“The death…totem?”

“Yeah, it’s like Amaya’s Spirit Totem or Zari Air one, but it can summon the dead as ghosts and, I don’t know, do all this other stuff.” There was a pained way that Sara waved her hand with a careless gesture. Alex didn’t know what to think of the totem, but she knew that something that could summon the undead was on a whole new level of dangerous.

“Can it summon anyone?” she asked.

“You got someone in particular you want to see again?”

Alex frowned, thinking back at all the people that had left her. “No. But there are enough ghosts in my head without having to be actually confronted by them.”

Sara turned, rolling over to look at her with a weak smile on her lips. “I suppose everyone has skeletons in their closest.”

“Not the way you and I do.”

Alex wasn’t a fool. She knew what an assassin for hire meant and the possibilities of such a profession. No doubt, Sara had more than one skeleton in her closet. It wasn’t something to brush past, and yet, what did it matter if Sara’s hands were covered in more blood than hers, or vice-versa. Both were still covered in blood. Neither one of them was innocent.

What mattered is who they were trying to be, now.

“Do you know the difference between an assassin and a government agent?” Alex asked.

“Is this a set up for a joke?”

“Partially.”

“One has better outfits,” Sara responded.

Alex smiled briefly, she didn’t envy the white leather, finding comfort in her uniform.“Government sanction,” she answered. “That’s the dividing veil between morality. Maybe not even morality, but at least legality. There’s a twisted dynamic of power, too.”

Sara blinked, before considering the underlying words of what she was saying. Her lips became pursed, a line forming between her brow. Alex could see that Sara wanted strike back with a defence but that she needed to consider the depth of what was being said, first. Or consider Alex’s feelings, maybe.

The thought came as Alex found their fingers wound together, unsure if she had reached out, or if Sara had herself. But suddenly, the woman was playing with her hand again, before giving it a final squeeze and pulling away.

“One day, we’ll share our stories over a bottle of whiskey in person,” Sara said, as if to saythat she needed to know Alex better first before she could come to a conclusion. “I can’t promise that you’ll be able to say the same after that.”

“Maybe you’ll see it my way.”

“Maybe,” Sara said, sounding like she didn’t believe that at all.

They were from two different worlds, in more ways than one.

Alex watched as Sara closed herself off, pushing back emotionally to allow herself to rest on a bed. Then, as the quiet elongated between them, Alex snuck a look at the woman and watched her drift asleep. Sara’s face seemed to ease, as her muscles gave way to sleep, her lips parting with the exhale of a slow breath.

And then, Sara fell into her dream again and the world slipped away from Alex too, as she fell back into her dreams. They were not good dreams, they were not nonsense ones, but neither were they nightmares. Only a reminder that she had once been someone else, before Supergirl had come to the DEO, before there had been another option to all of this.

Alex awoke to the beginning of dusk, as the sky turned topaz and rose.

Winn was at the scope, looking down at the other building, muttering to himself as if he’d always been there. There was a jarring moment where Alex adjusted to this reality, before she considered her dream. Her brain had certainly been capable of drawing other individuals before, and it had no problem with Sara’s colleagues twice before.

So…what was going on there?


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"You're crying Sara."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly! Thank you to everyone for their comments and kudos, I appreciate every single one of them and endeavour to always reply to any thoughts and questions. You can also shoot me a message over at my tumblr motherconfessors or beyondconfessor. 
> 
> Secondly, we're in the next arc of the fic which is where things get a little darker. I've added some new warnings (as you may have noticed) regarding psychological and non-explicit torture. There will be violence comming up (Sara is an ex-assassin and Alex is a DEO agent after all) but true to theme, these shouldn't overshadow the heart of the story, I understand if readers do drop off because it's not what they're after.
> 
> Third, I am in the process of moving house, which has been nasty dealing with the old real estate and trying to manage with the new landlord, not to mention my partner and I have two cats who did not enjoy the move at all. We haven't connected internet so updates may slow. Thank you for your patience. 
> 
> And finally, I have a new job which means I no longer commute three hours one way to work (whoo!) in fact I'll be commuting a lot less so I don't know how that will chip into my writing process, but hopefully I can stick to writing at the moment. 
> 
> But thank you anyway for coming on this journey with me. Hopefully you'll enjoy this story as it progresses!

Spooning cornflakes into her mouth, Alex stared through her scope at the opposing building. Winn had already slept for six hours, before then rising again to get breakfast for them both, bringing back milk, cornflakes, a few other groceries they stored in the minibar, and two cups of coffee that were from the shop across the road.

“I think you were right about the people looking through the city’s wiring,” he told her. “It looks like they’re tapping into something. They’re definitely doing _something_ and the equipment’s a little more specialised than your usual blue-collar worker.”

Alex hummed. A van had pulled up earlier, equipment had been unloaded and that was that. She’d already spoken to Merkel about their discoveries, who had blown up about not being told sooner, before going on a rage about the CIA. “Fucking shitbag’s already there? Who the fuck do they think they are? Cheating, lying cocksuckers think they can walk over _me_ and I’ll just take it like some God-damn fucking doormat? I should shove their own shit down their throats and snatch the guns from under them. Push them off the mission entirely and blacklist from future ops like the fuckers fucking deserve.”

The swearing had gone on for a while and although Alex had to pull the receiver away from her ear, she got the general message.

But it was the CIA. The CIA was funding this Ops for the most part so they couldn’t kick them off, the CIA who had the bulk of funding over most departments in the end anyway so there was no way to blacklist them. It the end, none of them were that surprised, only frustrated that they had set the bar at the ground, practically and had still managed to be disappointed by the department again. With the FBI –– and to some extent –– the military, there was a some respect, at least. But the CIA clearly thought themselves as being above them all. Kings to their peasants.

Assholes.

“I’ll run through a check, but I’ll need to get in on their network to get a better look as what they’re doing. I could try tapping a different area.”

Alex blinked, only catching the tail-end of whatever Winn had said. Swallowing the mouthful of cereal she had first, she told him, “Pass it by Merkel. She’ll want her own agents on it too, at the least.”

“I dunno, Alex. Time’s short on this one. They might just pack it up tomorrow. I wouldn’t want to be out there for long and it’s already been half a day.”

“Give Merkel a call now, we don’t have the equipment for it.”

“I’ve got plenty of equipment here, I brought all the tools we’ll need.”

Alex could feel the edge of annoyance as Winn talked back to her. He wouldn’t have had the gall to if she turned around to glare at him. As it was, she could see a shift in the movements of operatives.“You don’t have a plan.”

“I have a plan! I just told you the plan!”

“So, in broad daylight you’re going to ––“ she paused, watching someone walk out the building site, only to take out a cigarette and light it up around the corner. “–– to open up some other area down the street and just dive in. You’ll be conspicuous and jeopardise our current mission.”

“I could do it at night.”

“Three in the morning is still suspicious. Get a plan, a real plan, and then run it by Merkel. Otherwise she’ll have you thrown down to the bottom rung. ”

“Can you tal––“

“No.”

“But ––“

“If _you_ want to do this, _you_ need to run it by Merkel.”

“It’d be easier if J’onn was here,” he said under his breath. Alex felt his words like sandpaper against her nerves.

“You’ve been working here for well over a year now,” she snapped at him. “And J’onn not always going to be there so that you to avoid talking to the people you don’t like.”

“I didn’t say ––“

“If you want to stay on board, you need to do things like this. It sucks, it’s shit sometimes and yeah Merkel isn’t a fun call to have, but you have to do it and suck it up, even up if you get yelled at. You’re a DEO agent, even if you’re _barely_ cleared for the field.”

“Hey!” Winn yelled. Alex pulled away from the scope and glared at him. Immediately his anger softened with fear of her. Rightfully so. “Look, there’s no need to be so cranky,” he managed to say with a brittle _just kidding!_ smile.

Alex sighed, biting back any further comments. It’d been four days since she’d been alone for more than ten minutes at a time. She needed her space. Her quiet, low-lit space where she could have a drink without feeling someone’s eyes on her. Cranky or not, Alex was starting to wish she’d gone on mission with someone else from the DEO. Like Vasquez, who never would have spoken back at her. Simon Li, who she had done plenty of missions with, would have been good company, too.

“Do you really think she’s going to yell at me?”

“I don’t know,” she growled at him. And then, drawing in a breath, she forced herself back to a normal tone as she said, “She might like your idea. You’ll have to pitch whatever plan you come up with first –– that’s the point.”

“Fine, whatever. I’ll…I’ll make some cool plan and you can be like a look-out, or something cool. Maybe a body guard.”

“I have to stay on recon, remember?”

“This is _part_ of the recon, isn’t it?” Winn asked. “Learning if they’re tapping into the phone lines or something, spying on someone in particular.”

Alex shut her eyes. He did have a semblance of a point. Still, she couldn’t see exactly what point they’d have in tapping into any of that. Not that that was her area of expertise –– that was Winn’s. Winn was the reason they were on this operation, Winn was the genius and Winn was smarter than her in all departments that were tech.

Hell, she even got her trainees to have a few sessions with him, despite his quickness to frustration with those who couldn’t keep up.

“You’re right,” she admitted to him out-loud. “It is part of the reason why we’re here and if you want to pitch to Merkel for me to be there, I won’t fight it.”

“Good, good,” Winn said, but Alex could tell he was already lost in his own thoughts and had probably stopped paying attention to what she said halfway through.

Without allowing herself to get angry, Alex returned to her cereal, and when that was done, she sat there, watching and waiting for the CIA to make a move. People walked around, they interacted in one capacity or another. They even laughed together –– probably about the DEO and tricking them into thinking they were actually going to work together.

It was dredging work.

Winn drew up a few ideas, two of which he scrapped as Alex pointed out logistics issues, before he began to develop one that involved sneaking in around night, further down town. He just needed to get plans on the city to work out the best location for it.

Alex napped around midday, waking up groggy near dusk as resumed her position at the window. Already her body was feeling lethargic from it all. All she wanted was some action, a good fight to get her heart rate up.

She settled instead for a short, intensive work-out and took her spot as Winn went back to his plans.

And then it happened, a weapon’s case arrived. Alex knew the look of the black metal case as they pulled it from the back of a nondescript white van for transport. To general passerby it could be seen as just a tool box of some kind. It wasn’t though, a metal case didn’t require four people to walk around it.

What it was, was the metal case that they had been wanting to pick-up from the arms dealer.

The case was taken inside, and within the hour, it was taken out.

Alex had already switched places with Winn, grabbing comms before she made a run for the car. “They’re heading North-East,” Winn said into her comms. “On the hardware shop side.”

Alex eased the car out of the hotel parking lot, following Winn’s direction. Four cars ahead, she could see the van, patiently waiting for a red-light to turn green.

The weapon’s case could be anything. It could be a fake they were looking to swap the original with, it could be a different arms deal entirely or it could be the weapon they were after. Whatever it was, Alex couldn’t believe that it had happened.

“Winn, make contact with Merkel and inform her of what we’ve found. Then, keep an eye on what’s happening, see if anything else turns up.”

“On it.”

“I’m going to go radio silent, okay?”

“Wait! Alex, Is that really a good ––“

She clicked the comms off, she didn’t have time to hear Winn’s argument. If the CIA was as paranoid as she expected, they would be listening for radio chatter and Winn wasn’t someone she considered _discreet_.

The van was only a few cars away, easy enough for her to keep an eye on, whilst watching her own six. Still, it was the city and tailing only went as well as the lights kept the same distance apart. Twice Alex had found herself at red lights after the van had gone for green, but twice still she had managed to catch up.

The van was taking an exit away from the city, leading into the residential district. Apartments went from twenty stories, to six and to the usual two stories. They were dotted around with three-bedroomed homes, as the state of people’s gardens went from manicured lawns toweed-filled, overgrown patches. Wherever they were going, Alex had a feeling it was a place that was used to the sound of gunfire.

She watched as a line of cars followed behind her just as she followed the line in front, eyes on three cars ahead as the van made its way down the main street of the residential area, passing a grocery shop where three cars out of their line-up, seemed to drop off.

“ _No_!”

Alex’s eyes flashed up to the rearview mirror, her feet ready to hit the breaks as she checked where she’d seen a flash of shadow. The singular word drifted in her ears, ringing as she glanced to her side door mirrors for answer. There didn’t seem to immediately be anything pedestrians around that could have yelled out like that.

Still her eyes danced around her mirrors. looking for the woman that cried out.

There was a car behind her, where two teenagers seemed to be singing along to something. _Maybe_ , she thought. But her ears rung and she felt woozy. Like the flu had suddenly struck her. Behind that car was a plain, white sedan. Early 2000s model, probably fifth-hand going by the dents and scrapes on it. The person in the car looked angry, agitated at something.

Alex focused back on the van. There was only one car between them now.

The car in front of her, residing between her and the van pulled off into a house, leaving just her to trail behind the van. Would they have noticed that she’d been following since the city? Or was it just another car to them?

Who was she kidding, they definitely suspected her at least.

_Come on, Danvers, you used to be good at this._

When the white van turned left at a T section, she turned right. The white sedan and a black pick-up truck followed her. From the rearview mirror, Alex couldn’t see what they were doing.

The residential area became a backroad, the white, bumped up sedan followed behind, the furious driver clutching at the steering wheel. How long had they been following her?

The ringing in her ears grew louder, black creeping at the edges of her vision; as she blinked, the grey skies seemed to turn an impossible blue before her. Alex blinked again, just in time to feel something slam into the side of her car, knocking her off the road. She slammed on the breaks, turning the wheel as the ABS tried to kick in to stop her from spinning out into the big, tall tr ––

“ _Stop!_ ”

The world was dark and blue. Alex’s heart raced within her chest before she soothed it down as she fell to her knees.

_What_? Her hands shook, as if her blood sugar was low.

Her seatbelt was gone. The car was gone. The world was…blue.

All around her, the landscape had become a wasteland of dead trees and a starless sky. Alex watched as fog drifted around legs where she knelt.

(Where she sat, the engine smoking, her seatbelt felt too tight, her head felt heavy, pounding, there was a ringing in her ears as she closed her eyes just for a moment…)

The blue world, Alex realised, opening her eyes again. It was just as eery here as it had been the first time. What had brought her back here?

Nearby, there was a soft murmur of words, as if Alex was hearing someone speak from underwater. Rising to her feet, she moved over to where the source of the noise was.

Barbed scrub caught at her legs and hands, itching where it left its mark. It reminded her of when her mother would make her and Kara work in the gardens to prune the roses. She’d always come away, itching at her skin and warning her mother that that would be the last time, and yet, Kara came away grinning, looking as perfect as the rose she had pruned for their mother.

Alex’s boots crunched on the ground despite the careful movements. There was no loud voice declaring that he knew her, but Alex knew this was the same place. She kept her steps as muffled as she could on the gravel ground until she came across the source of the sound. Before her, only six or so feet away, was of a woman of a smaller build than herself, and although Alex could only see her back, she could see long dark hair, and hear a low drawled voice that sounded obstructed, as if Alex was hearing her through a wall.

She was talking to someone, but Alex couldn’t quite…

And then, as the woman moved out of the way, Alex realised why she’d been brought here.

Sara was standing in front of the woman, looking pained as she listened to the dark haired woman speak. Pained and angry, as if the woman had punched her in the gut.

Had Sara been the one that had cried out, before?

Alex took another step closer and found herself hitting something. Not a plant or even an object that she could see, but rather a barricade of some kind, invisible to the human eye. Alien-tech? She wondered at first, pressing her hand in front of her. There was no feeling of an electriccurrent that she was used to with alien barriers. It wasn’t entirely rigid, there was a flexibility to it, restrained as it was. It didn’t hold a temperature any different to her own palms, nor did it have a particular texture. It was more of a force, like two positive sides of a magnetic pushing her away.

“Sara?” she called out, but if Sara heard her, she made no apparent awareness of it. Only spoke, the words muffled and far away, to woman beside her. “Sara!” she called out louder and still the woman didn’t respond. She tried to punch the barricade, tried to kick it. The barrier remained.

Alex drew in a breath and willed herself to wake up. _Wake, the hell, up_. Nothing happened.

Maybe it was because she didn’t expect it to work. This was _Sara’s_ dream. Sara’s nightmare or hell-scape, going by her the terror in her eyes. And Alex had just been caught here for some reason.

Had Sara called her hear? Was this a dream? It didn’t look like a dream, it didn’t look like anywhere she could imagine on Earth and Sara had said it herself that she didn’t go off-world to other planets.

There was always a first for everything.

No, this didn’t feel like the small world they shared in their dreams, this felt like something else. Something not right, like she had broken into someone’s bedroom.

The world shifted, as if the landscape moved beneath her feet and Alex found herself staring at a twin to Sara.

Except this woman’s hair was braided from her face, done in a way so that it couldn’t easily be grabbed in a fight. This Sara was dressed in all black and looked at least five-years younger.

And Sara, Alex realised, her Sara, looked suddenly much older as she stared out in shell-shock as her past self stared down a man. Then, without so much as a grimace or hesitation, the twin Sara threw her dagger into his heart. Even through the barricade, Alex heard a little girl’s scream as she appeared in the landscape, running towards her murdered father as the then-Assassin Sara met the girl’s eyes, unflinching.

This was who Sara had once been, who a part of her still was and could be.

Alex felt nauseous at the sight. Sara had been an assassin. It was the first time she really took the weight of those words and considered what they actually meant. Sara had killed a father in front of his child. How many people _had_ Sara killed?

And yet, how many people had she slaughtered for the DEO before Kara came in? Aliens and beings alike, Alex had wielded weapons for shoot-to-kill missions longer than Kara had been at the DEO. It was easy, like second nature. She knew how to kill someone with her barehands. She knew how to torture, to interrogate and exploit a person’s weakness.

How many people had she killed in the name of the greater good?

“ _You’re crying Sara.”_

Alex looked up at the woman, the dark, bitch of a woman who was smirking at Sara as if she’d won some sort of prize in accomplishing the task of cutting through Sara’s walls. There would be nothing more satisfying than punching the dark-haired woman, Alex thought as she glared at the smug face.

And then found herself meeting the woman’s eyes.

The woman smiled at her.

“Your friend is, too.” The distortion was gone from her voice but Alex didn’t have a chance to work out what that meant as she was confronted with Sara’s tear-stained face. The anger for the other woman faded and Alex found the quiet stillness between them. This was not the quiet that Sara and her shared often in their space. This was strained as if they both wanted to speak, but neither of them had the words.

Sara’s mouth quivered as she whispered out a hoarse, “Alex?” and Alex _flinched,_ her hand reaching beside her where she usually kept her gun, though none remained. She couldn’t explain the sudden fear, but her heart hammered in her chest.

Sara’s shoulder’s fell, her eyes dropping away and Alex scrambled to find defence to her horror, but her throat seemed to clog with words, filling it with nothing but excuses. There was nothing she could say that would fix that. She had witnessed something that Sara hadn’t wanted anyone to see, and the very memory had made Alex nauseous to consider what else had happened in Sara’s life. What had to have been countless bodies, countless homicides for what could only have been for an exchange of something as simple as power, money or other goods.

How was that any different to what politicians did? What they asked of the departments?

Alex looked away, feeling her eyes prick as whatever had been between them, irreparably broke.

“I’m sorry,” she admitted.

Sara shook her head turning away from her, but not a moment before Alex could see her jaw clench to hold back the shuddering vulnerability.

And then, Sara was gone. Alex’s heart seemed to irreparably shatter in her chest. It didn’t feel like breaking up with Maggie, it didn’t feel like rejection. There had only been one feeling that came close to this, and it when Kara’s Red Kryptonite rage had told her that she was worthless. That spitting accusation that cracked at Alex’s psyche, even to this day, as she _wondered_ how much of what Kara had said was true.

More than she wanted to believe, it seemed.

The dark-haired woman stayed for a beat longer, smiling at Alex. “You played your part well. Mallus will be very pleased.”

Alex looked at the woman, hating her. Her hand clenched into her fist as she thought again about how good it would feel to punch her, before the world grew dark and cold. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe and all she hear was the woman laughing.

With a sharp exhale, Alex awoke to feeling of iced water thrown upon her. Gulping for a new breath, she coughed out a wet mouthful, coughing as she expelled something from her lungs. Her body began to shake then. She strained, curling up upon herself and found she couldn’t bring her hands around to her belly or chest.

There was something rattling in her ears, like a chainlink fence as she tried to do it again.

The realisation came with four more thoughts: She was lying down, she was cold, she was wet, she was tied up.

_Imprisoned_. Her eyes flew open to the darkness, looking around at the vague shapes around her self as the adrenaline spike awoke her to her surroundings.

“Andy, go and tell her she’s awake” she heard a gruff voice –– a woman’s? –– say.

There was the sound of departing, heavy footsteps. Rubber soles on concrete. A metallic whine then the slam of a heavy door. Alex listened as a rod slid into place on the door after whoever had left, leaving her alone with the other person. One-on-one, she could do that if she could get an advantage of the surroundings.

Alex drew her eyes around the room from what she could see, but she couldn’t make out much from her position.

She was lying on a concrete floor, there was a wall nearby and the ground smelt of wet dust and dirt, a metallic tinge to it all, an oily smell. Weapons site, a warehouse of some kind? Was the one the DEO was expected to come across in a few days?

The room was freezing and her body was already shaking to find warmth, the sound of white noise, like static on an old television, seemed to build in her ears and pound, as if the static was rattling inside of her skull.

The concrete was wet and coarse against her arm that was chained behind her. As much as it ached, as her head and body ached –– car accident, she remembered the big tree on the corner of the road –– she didn’t get up and move her way around yet.

The woman’s voice from before had come from in front of her, but in the dim light, she couldn’t see anything. Maybe a bucket on its side, maybe boxes beside that, but the image was dark and blurry. Had she moved? Alex strained to hear anything over the static that was growing louder with intensity.

Concussion, she decided on, with no aligning thoughts before it. The word seemed right, even through a murk of concepts inside of her skull. She should stay awa…

A weight pressed down on her ribs and Alex’s eyes flew open as she gasped at the intensity of the pressure. _Wrong_ , her body seemed to say at the pressure, it was painful, like her rib bones were being bent. _Fractured,_ came her response. _Broken_? An afterthought as she followed the cause of the pain.

There was a black stiletto heel on her chest, there was a bare leg. Upon that leg, she could see as snake winging its way up her thigh, shadowed by red material. A red dress. Alex knew that dress, she knew that tattoo, she knew the woman.

“And I know you,” the woman said, as if she were speaking to a lost child. “You’re that agent with Supergirl. An _agent_ of the DEO if I recall.”

Alex struggled to breathe as the pressure pushed harder against her chest. She tried to wiggle out from underneath it, but it was like wiggling in concrete, her body slowly resisted, muscles going rigid with pain.

Alex clenched her jaw, determined to not allow a single hissed sound escape.

“Look at you now,” Roulette said. Her heel lifted and Alex watched her turn, the dress swishing like a cascade of red, foamed at the top with a mink shawl. “You know, I think I’ve got exactly what I want. Do send a thank you note to the CIA, if you will.”

Roulette stepped away, her voice fading as she spoke to someone else and Alex found herself staring into the void of the room again, her thoughts like black tar as she drifted through vague concepts, feeling the words slip through her fingers as she tried to grasp onto them despite the exhaustion. She needed to stay away. She needed to keep up and not sleep and get out and find…

Find…?

Who did she need to…?


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex wasn't welcome anymore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long! I have moved house, my cats are moved in, only half of my things are in boxes. Yay! Still haven't started the new job yet and my commute to work has increased by an hour, but you know, steps.
> 
> Anyway, thank you to everyone. Hope you enjoy!

Alex awoke to her teeth chattering. Her jaw ached from it. Despite her attempts, she couldn’t stop it. Drawing her knees closer, she tried to fall back to sleep, but even that was fitful. Like she was on the edge of sleep, in the darkness of it, but not quite. A violent shudder hit her spine as her shirt rose up, exposing her skin to the concrete.

Her whole body felt cold and wet. No, not wet, _damp._

Why didn’t she take the extra moments to change into her suit? The armour would have kept her both dry and warm. She may have lost the tail of that van, but she’d lost it anyway in the end.

Alex tried again to stop shaking. For a few moments she succeeded before it began again.

Who was she kidding, there was no way she would have allowed herself to lose those valuable minutes in tailing. If she had just remained focus on the mission, had considered her plans and learnt to map the city better, maybe she could have worked out a faster route. She already had National City mapped out like it was floor plan of her apartment. It was basic tactics, the very basic, _know your terrain_.

Rookie mistake.

Alex stopped, drawing in a breath for herself. It wouldn’t be long before Winn called in for a missing alert on her. The car was fitted with a tracking device, he’d be able to track it to her last known location and from there, it was only a matter of time until the place was stormed by DEO Agents. And Supergirl.

Her eyes stung, and she couldn’t tell if it exhaustion or just frayed nerves. She wasn’t going to get to sleep again, any time soon. She should do something, try to, at least.

Sitting up, Alex felt at the chains that bound her, tugging at the links to feel for any weak spots. If there were, she wasn’t strong enough to break them.

The cuffs felt rudimentary. If she had a hair pin, maybe she could work out unlocking them, though the position she was in would make it awkward.

Alex felt her limbs, moving them with care to investigate them for any damage. Her legs felt bruised but not broken. Ribs hurts, but they were probably fractured. There was definitely something, a bump, or scratched skin at least, on her forehead, but everything else seemed superficial. Everything was sore, but she was used to sore.

Using only her legs, she rose onto her feet to look around the room.

Her body still violently shook from the cold, but just out of reach, she found a blanket on the far side of the room, to east side, if she considered the door to be her ‘north’. It was just out of reach. Alex tried to use her feet to reach for it, then, getting onto her side again, she tried to reach further, even as her arms began to be pulled by the chains, straining in the position as they were tugged the wrong way.

She exhaled, dropping back and then curled upon herself again.

The room had no windows, and from what she could see, no light came from underneath the door that she could see. Sometimes she heard something. The distant sound of a slammed metal door, but it seemed otherwise quiet.

The warehouse she was being kept seemed deserted, and maybe it was. There was no way for her to tell at this time.

Over the last few hours –– days? –– Alex would find herself not quite sleeping, but suddenly awakening in the darkness, unsure how much time had passed. It couldn’t be long, the body only lasted so long without heat and water. She tried for the blanket again. Failed.

Her clothes, from her own body heat, eventually did dry, though the edges, the hemlines and the collar of her shirt, remained damp. Maybe they were just cold. Everything was cold. If there was a light, she imagined that she could see her breath exhale her body.

During a moment where Alex’s mind was lulled, the door opened. She flinched away, and stared as light flooded in front of her eyes, burning them. The chain was removed from the centre of the room, and a strong arm wretched her to her feet.

Alex’s stomach hurt, her mouth felt dry and a headache threatened to top her over, but she squinted through the light as she was manhandled down a hall, despite her hissing breaths as her ribs complained about the movement.All the while her chains rattling like some Victorian prison ghost.

She was placed into a bright room, on a plastic chair that looked generic. Her chains were secured in front of her, to a metal table, draping over her knees.

Alex thought about sleeping. Above her, the light flickered, making a clicking noise loud enough to draw her thoughts to it. It grated on her nerves, the flickering light, bright and then dark, done-so purposefully, she suspected to make her agitated.

She drew her thoughts away from it, shutting her eyes and thinking about falling asleep. Thinking about her bed at home, and what it felt like lying upon it.

She thought about Sara, about Winn and J’onn and Kara. Kara would find her, Alex didn’t doubt it.

The door opened, on the opposite side of the room that she’d entered in with. It wasn’t Veronica who entered, but someone else. A man dressed in a long, thick coat. On his shoulder,and his boots, Alex could see flakes of snow. Had she been moved further north into Canada?

“Good morning, Agent,” the man said, his accent accented from the Russian tongue.

The man undid his jacket, lying it on the back of his chair as he sat down. There was knife on his belt, but no gun. From underneath his collar, she could see a very small black smudge, a tattoo perhaps?

Mafia, gang, ex-military, whoever he was, he was certainly dealing with Roulette.

“You know,” he said, “in this country, we reply when someone says ‘good morning’.”

Alex didn’t respond. She didn’t buy it for a second that she’d somehow, for some random reason, been taken to Europe. She also didn’t like the way the man studied her why he spoke, as if she were a specimen.

“I shall be quick, then,” the man said. “Ms Roulette would be very pleased if you were to hand over the secrets of Supergirl. Just a few, unimportant facts. Then we’d be up for possibly exchanging you for one our own. Good, decision, yes?”

Again, Alex remained quiet, unwilling to say anything. She knew how negotiation and interrogation tactics worked. The less you said, the harder it was to read you and she was determined to make it damn hard to read her.

The man watched her, his eyes running from her head, to her shoulders, down her arms to her hands. He was still looking at her like a specimen, and Alex wondered if he was a medical doctor. At the DEO, she would run the same observations while interrogating. But she didn’t pick Roulette to be someone who cared for prisoner welfare. Exploitation of weakness, looking to see where he could hurt her best, maybe?

The man rose from his chair, placing his jacket back on. “I shall speak to Ms Roulette, perhaps some time alone with allow you to consider this proposal,” he told her, adjusting his clothes, before walking back to the door.

Alex was left in the room for what seemed to be another half an hour, or more. The fluorescent light that hung above continued to flicker enough that it grated on her nerves. The room also seemed more frigid that the one she’d been in before, and she continued to shake for warmth.

The door behind her opened, the chains were unsecured from the desk as she was picked up onto her feet. Alex hissed in pain, but made no other sound. She wanted nothing more than to drive her elbow into the underling’s face, but she wouldn’t. She wasn’t in a state to fight, and as she gave the person a once over, she found them lacking any weapons she could turn back on them.

Maybe she could use her own chains, but that would involve having to have the dexterity to avoid being caught, and the strength to pull back at the chains, neither of which she had at this time. Despite the pain, which she could work through, her body had limits and she’d felt in walking. She wanted to walk faster, wanted to be careful in her steps, not have to partially lean against the person’s hold on her, but her body was _blocked_. Her legs would not lift as high, they would just stop and then fall back to the ground as if something had restrained them, as if her sockets just needs a little more oil in them to move.

Alex was placed in a dark room again, it seemed to be the same, it seemed to have the same blanket and bucket. But near where her chains were, there was a cup of water, with what looked to be soup from a can, gelatinous in form as it hadn’t been melted down into liquid. Beside that was a stale, but not undesirable looking bread roll.

She stared at it as her chains were re-attached to the welded, thick link in the centre of the room. One Alex had already pried her fingers across in what seemed to have been some darkness ago.

When the person left, Alex hesitated at consuming the food. It could be poisoned, or at the very least, drugged. The room was too dark to see if it’d been tampered with in any obvious way, and she couldn’t make any smells out over her own grimy body and the strong oily, metal smell that the room had.

Her stomach gnawed, even at the cold, gelatine-like soup, and her throat was sore enough, dry enough that her tongue felt thick and coarse in her mouth, that she wasn’t even sure if she cared if the drink was drugged.

Except she knew better than most what kind of drugs were available for interrogation. Hallucinogens were the most obvious. It was easy to make someone suggestible, to transplant an idea, appear to be somewhere else, someone else if Veronica wasn’t able to get a shape-shifting alien. Or it could just be drugged with something make her violently ill, fear and pain were often good motivators for sadist interrogators, but sickness, feeling your body empty again and again with no relief for days, when muscles clenched…that was a good motivator too.

She doubted that Veronica would go to all this trouble only to dispose of her within the first few days, so poison at least was off the table. Nonetheless, poison in small doses could still make her sick and a part of her wondered if she was really in a state to be making educated guesses, no matter how well she’d been trained.

And yet, God she was thirsty. Her throat hurt, her tongue felt dry, even her teeth ached.

Given that, it could only be the first few days going by how thirsty she was. Probably two, though it could be more. Sitting on stakeout had given her plenty of time to drink plenty of water. They could have kept her hydrated with an IV when she was under. She wouldn’t even know, her whole body was cut up and beaten, even if she had any light to look for a single prick.

Not that that mattered, she still was playing twenty-questions with a cup of water, wondering if it was drugged. Not that she could really see a motive in drugging it. After-all, if Veronica really wanted to drug her, all she had to do was get one of her goons to stab her with a needle. It’d be quick, easy. Alex might fight them, but with her strength at the moment, she wasn’t much of a fighter. A nuance, at best, against Roulette’s goons.

But that didn’t really say that there _wasn’t_ drugs in it. It’d still be easier to dose her through food and water than to get a needle.

God, maybe it was just another form of psychological torture, like this room, the promise the man had made. Was the food drugged, or not. Would it make her sick, or not. Did she care enough or not?

Alex took a chance and drank the water. It tasted normal enough. Then she decided to at least keep her strength up, so she ate the soup, despite how the thick, congealed texture feltagainst her tongue and then sliding down her throat was enough that she gagged twice.

It took her back to her college days when she had up-ended a can of soup, only for the soup matter to remain in the shape of the can inside of the pot she’d been planning to cook her dinner in. After that, it’d been instant noodles for a while in her share-house, maybe a few vegetables and greens when her mother paid her a visit and stocked up her fridge. It was probably the same type of soup. Some chicken and corn made mostly of cooked bones and fat.

Veronica could have left her starve, or given her scraps to eat. Clearly she wanted her to be strong enough for something, even if the food was as cold as the room.

Alex stopped eating as the thought came to her. She was on the scraps of the bowl, pushing bread around the edges as she ate it and considered her future. Whatever they had planned, she needed to beat them to the punch first, or at the very least, be prepared for it.

But how did you prepare for the unknown?

She pushed at the bowl and cup, felt over the tray as she considered her options. Training had always been simple: what can you do to fix the most immediate problem, and what do you need to do the rest? The answer became clear. Her most immediate problem was the cold, so first, she was going to reach out, and grab that fucking blanket, then, she was going to work out every inch of the room.

She was in pain, she was angry, she was a DEO Agent. She could survive long enough to work out how to escape from Roulette’s claws.

Inching back to welded loop in the middle of the room, she felt around and straightened every link in the chain so that when it pulled taught, she had a greater reach for the blanket. Then, using the empty tray between her feet, she used it as an additional foot and a half of length to reach out, towards the blanket and pull it closer.

Inch it closer.

Alex felt her arms strain, but she was not going to shake her way through the cold for another unending length in the darkness.

Fuck that.

Finally, when the blanket was well up, under her calves, she stopped. Her body dropped, allowing her arms to relax, feeling her muscles complain even still as she the chain slackened against the ground. She wasn’t quite there yet, but that at least felt like she’d done something.

When she could move again, she pulled the blanket up, using her feet again, until it was under her hips, and then, just in reach of fingers until she could grasp it and tug it up.

Alex sighed, feeling the coarse material in her grip. It was hers. It was hers, she won. She wasn’t going to go cold again.

Exhaling a shuddered breath, as every inch of herself seemed to be burning with one pain or another, she inched herself into a position where she could pull the blanket over her body, even as it felt like steel wool against every inch of skin it touched. She didn’t care.

She also didn’t care that it was inexplicably stiff in certain parts of the blanket, or that it stunk of mildew, even though it felt dry enough. She could feel her jaw relax, her body’s shakes going to tremors as she curled up underneath it in an awkward foetal position, somehow managing to cover most, if not all of her self.

Alex felt her head ease as her body finally started becoming warm enough. Even in the uncomfortable position, even though her shoulders ached, her neck ached everything wasn’t quite comfortable enough. Even then as a distant panic, like a bell ringing in the distant, seemed to say _No, we need to—!_

Alex _eased_.

As her body stopped shaking for the first time, she felt the darkness welcome her back as she fell asleep, despite every physical and emotional reason not to.

Despite…

Alex opened her eyes into a bedroom.

It was the same sparsely decorated, if with a few weapons lying around, room she recalled the first time she had dreamscaped herself the Waverider. Her eyes drew around the room, to a scrunched up ball of paper on the floor, to the hand it must have come from, to Sara’s face.

Alex felt her chest shudder. Her heart clenched at the very sight of her at the same time her body seemed to just _ease_ , as if she was both skittish and excited, like some puppy, at the sight of Sara Lance sleeping in her bed. There was a gentleness to image, one that gave a pertinent feeling of wanting to lie down beside her and just forget about the cold floor and metal manacles on her wrists.

As if sensing her energy, Sara’s eyes opened and met Alex’s, not unlike they had that first time. Her face almost smiled and then froze, easing back to a neutral expression as she sat up.

“Hi,” Alex said, and the word seemed to stretch out with corners of her mouth. She might as well have waved her hand.

For a moment, Sara didn’t say anything, she just stared, unblinking until every muscle in Alex’s body, one-by-one, began to tense, she could feel her spine lengthen with a drawn breath. Finally, when Alex felt like an attack was imminent, Sara spoke.

“You’re Mallus,” she said, anger thundered in the words.

“Sorry?”

“You’re Mallus,” Sara repeated again, “or Nora, or whoever. I know that this whole _thing_ has been a ––” Sara’s voice cut off, shoulders sagging. “I know that you’re not real.”

_Not real_. The whispered words echoed in her ears.

“People in glass houses,” Alex said. There was a lilt, a slip of humour that faded away. She remembered the dark-haired woman in the blue world, smiling at her, telling her that _Mallus_ would be pleased. Fuck her. Whoever she was.

“This isn’t a glass house, _Alex_ ,” Sara spat. _“_ This is your one and only warnings to get the hell out of my head and off my ship.”

“But you’re my dream. My…hallucination, or creation of my subconscious or _wh-_ You can’t just kick me out of my own dreams!”

“Right. Sure. Well, whatever you mean by that doesn’t add up to everything else. You’re Mallus, I know you’re him because you were in _my_ mind. Even if this is that astral projection crap, there’s no way that –– you’re not Alex Danvers.” Sara face twisted between heartbroken and furious. “So cut the crap before I beat the truth out of you.”

“I’m not Mallus!” Alex said. “I’m not…trying to trick you, or anything like that. You don’t…” she paused, her face scrunching up as she tried to think of what caused the shift in their relationship. But that was obvious. The blue-scape, the dream world where the Other Sara had been, where that dark-haired woman had been. Alex could feel the guilt, like hot stickiness in her gut.

“Sara, you don’t have to believe me. But I want you to know…” She wondered at the point in even trying to explain it and then decided that this truth, at least, deserved to be said even if fell on deaf ears. “I want you know that what terrified me about seeing the real, the assassin, part of you –– what disgusted me –– it wasn’t because it was your history. It wasn’t even because it was you or how you acted. I mean it frightened me but that’s because I’m…” her throat closed around the words. She couldn’t say them.

She couldn’t even confess to herself.

“I’m a DEO Agent,” Alex explained instead. “And to ensure the safety of my Earth from extraterrestrial life I don’t always get to be the good guy. The job that came with taking on Kara as my responsibility means that I have to be the person that makes those decisions, so that she doesn’t have to. Even if the person I-I do that to has a family that they’re just trying to protect. Even if they’re not the bad guy, just in the wrong place, working for the wrong person or because…because I was ordered to. And I’m used to been given orders to _do that,_ to kill,” she swallowed as she said the words, feeling it stick in her throat. “Orders I knew were right, or wanted to believe were, and maybe I don’t have to make them as much because Kara can just.swoop right in and save the day…But I used to. I used to do it a lot to keep her safe and you, that you, I didn’t want to see myself there.”

Sara stared at her. Her lips pursed. There was no understanding or conviction. Just a cold, blank slate before she looked away.

“I still believe what I said, about the difference between an assassin and a government agent. I didn’t realise it was so…”

Alex trailed off, hearing the hollowness of the words, despite knowing their sincerity. It didn’t matter what the truth was, Sara wasn’t listening to her anymore and Alex could find the words for herself. There was nothing she could do.

She felt the fight drop from herself.

Through it all, Sara didn’t say a word. And with that, Alex knew she wasn’t welcome here anymore.

It was just a dream, she decided whilst allowing herself to unbind from the dreamscape, and slip away, back into the darkness.

Just a dream.

The world felt cold again.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex couldn't fight it anymore

“Up.”

Alex opened her eyes to a torchlight over her face. She flinched away, but the torchlight blared, red and vibrant so that even her scrunched up eyelids couldn’t block them.

She eased her eyes open, looking to the wall, and then to the boots that were next to her face. The woman, thick and stocky, different to the one she’d seen previously, looked down at her from what seemed to be a long, ways away. She looked ready to kick her if she didn’t move and Alex didn’t want to be kicked in the face, it didn’t seem worth it.

She tried to get up, even though she could barely use her hands given their awkward state.

It occurred to Alex that perhaps she still had a concussion. A headache wasn’t going away any time soon. Maybe a doctor had looked her over and given her the okay. Maybe no one cared enough.

“I won’t ask again.”

_Right_.

Alex rose and then stumbled, her knees hit the ground hard. Grunting back the pain, she pushed up on her legs, and…nothing happened. Her leg had given out. She tried again, shaking as she tried to stand. The woman grabbed her arm and ripped her from the ground. Alex swung back. Her elbow hit the woman’s arm.

“Pathetic,” the woman spat at her.

She fumbled on her feet, pulling away, as if drunk. It came to Alex then that perhaps she had been drugged. Her thoughts seemed swayed, fumbling even with the sleep. Did she get to sleep?

She remembered…

She remembered Sara’s face and then darkness and then waking. Sara’s face glaring at her, then looking away. Sara’s hands clenching at her sides, void of any rings.

The underling woman shoved her and Alex almost fell back to her knees before the back of her shirt was grabbed. Alex swung back, shoving into the woman’s and pushing against her. Instead of crashing into the woman, she felt the underling _catch_ her.

She was a DEO agent who had fought off people while drunk, who had gone to work exhausted only an hour’s sleep and still managed to kick ass. “Try that one more time, order or not, I will break your arm,” the woman said.

_That_. That was useless. That was terrifying. What was she if she couldn’t fight?

The underling, still holding her, shuffled her down the hallway, back into the room with the table and two chairs. She was placed in the room. The chain was placed on the table. The door was shut behind her.

It whined as it shut, clicking locked behind her.

Alex’s hands shook. She could see them under the flickering, fluorescent light, an eerie yellow-green colour that made her skin look sickly. Her body was filled with bruises, her knuckles ripped apart.

_Know your terrain_. Alex looked around the room, there were shaved wood and paint chips in the corner, as if the room had at one stage been half-heartedly swept and then forgotten. The walls were made of plaster, there was peeling paint, cracks and dents –– the kind that furniture makes when it bangs into it, or when fists punch into a wall.

She could see brown drops on the wall. Old, dried blood probably.

Maybe. Maybe others were being interrogated here. She never heard them shuffling around if they were.

There were two doors on either side of the room. Each door probably connected to two different hallways. Once upon a time, this may have been a break room for staff in the factory. There was empty spaces on the wall and floor that looked like benches had been removed. There was even a wall socket beside one of the gaps

The wall sockets were not any of the European ones she recognised. They weren’t even American. They looked…like the Chinese wall plugs?

Maybe it was there to confuse her. Why would she be in China –– or wherever the hell it was? Why wouldn’t they tell her or imply that she was somewhere else or God it’d been so long since she’d memorised all of those adaptors and plugs maybe it was the Russian plug.

Alex let out a breath, and leant back against the plastic chair, closing her eyes against the flickering light. She needed to keep calm. That’s what would get her through this. Keep calm and know her terrain.

What did she learn? It was a factory of some kind that had been repurposed. She was probably being kept in a storage room. Sometimes storage rooms had temporary walls around them –– not that she would be able to tell while she was chained up. She just needed to learn how to unchain herself.

Alex looked at her hands before she could get a good look at the chains, the door opened from the other side of the room. The man from her first interrogation came through the door, he placed his coat on the back of the chair, showing off the knife in its sheath, hanging from his belt just like he did last time. Except, this time he pulled out a notebook and a pen. “Good morning, Agent.”

Did he know her name? Did he tell her his name last time? She couldn’t remember. She could barely remember the interaction. It was probably only hours ago, and yet it felt like a dream from a few nights ago.

“I see you have decided to leave your manners behind once again. This is very American, I understand. You walk into shops and do not say pleasantries to the nice assistants. Just stare blankly past them, tell them only what you want from them as if they were robots.” Accent seemed to have thickened since the last interaction. It sounded clunky, almost a parody of the Russian accent.

“Have you considered my offer?” he asked.

She kept her mouth shut.

“Shall we begin then?” The man flipped open his notebook then. “Ms Roulette has a few not-so-important questions, I will ask, and you will answer in whatever way you choose. Question number one, what does Supergirl eat?”

_Eat_? Alex felt a bubble of humour rise in her chest before she suppressed it. It did appear that he wasn’t kidding about them looking to be questions of little importance.

Alex supposed that it wasn’t a well-known thing so it made sense that Roulette may want to narrow down what type of alien Supergirl was. Still, even answering as simple as _food_ could get Kara in trouble, give something away. Without so much as a flinch or twitch from her body facial muscles, she remained quiet.

Still, she felt her stomach rumble for potstickers.

The man wrote something down on the notebook. Alex wondered if it was her lack of response, or just an effort to put fear into her. If it were the latter, he would have to try harder than that to make her flinch.

“Question number two, does Supergirl sleep?"

Perhaps Roulette desired to garner information about how human Kara was.

“Does she require much sleep?” He asked. It sounded almost like a prompt rather than the next question allegedly written down on his notebook. Still, he was studying her, staring at her as if trying to read from her reactions.

Good luck. Alex was a blank slate. 

“Question three,” he said, not attempt to write anything down that time. “When did Supergirl arrive on Earth?”

That gave Alex pause. She felt the number pop into her head, but it wasn’t just that, it was as though that answer filled in a blank spot she’d long since forgotten. She could barely remember it, but it had been last year when Kara came to her door and Alex had been about to run off with Maggie for…for a concert. The Bare Naked Ladies? Had it been _that_ night?

Kara had been then to celebrate her arrival on Earth and Alex had blown her off because they could always celebrate it later and she was so desperate to spend time with Maggie. It wasn’t Kara’s birthday, just her annual celebration of arriving on Earth.

Except…that year had been special and Alex didn’t realise, never considered its importance. Kara had been on Earth longer than Krypton. How had she missed that one?

“Question Four,” the man said. “What is your relationship with Supergirl?”

Alex knew who she was to Supergirl, a work colleague. But to Kara? She was her sister, which meant she was Kara’s protector, Kara’s friend and even her antagonist at times; Kara’s nag, her counsel, her opposite, her defender, her critique. She was and always would be Kara's family. Friends had come and gone in their lives, lovers had passed by, giving or receiving broken hearts, but the Danvers sisters stayed together, no matter the jealously or anger slung between them, they always had each other's backs.

“Excellent, I think we’re done here.”

The man rose, pen clicked as he closed the notebook and returned them back into the pocket they came out of. As he pulled on his jacket, he smiled and said, “A pleasure, Agent.”

It seemed all so fast. And yet, this was a man who was pleased by something. Had she, in her exhausted state, somehow managed to give him _something_? Had whispered a thought allowed?

No, it didn’t seem possible.

The man exited. The woman entered, undoing her chains from the centre of the room and leading her back out into the hall.

Alex passed four, unmarked doors. She counted them this time — three on her right, one on her left, before she returned to her cell. There was no food, no water, no tray. All of those things had been taken.

Her blanket was there.

She waited until the chains were placed back into the centre, clicked in place and the woman had left the room before she curled up under the blanket again.

Her hands were in front of her, instead of behind her back this time. She curled up with ease. She closed her eyes.

And awoke on the Waverider. It took only a few moments more before Sara opened her eyes and then shut them, rolling over and away without so much as a word.

Message received. Alex felt the dream slip away back into the darkness.

She awoke to a single word. “Up.”

It became a routine. Alex would be taken to the room. She would sit in the chair. She would be asked questions about Supergirl. Things that were ‘harmless’ in appearance. What was Supergirl’s favourite food? What did she drink? Did she need water? What does her home look like?

Sometimes the questions turned on her, where did she live, where did she order regular food from? Did she cook? On and on they went, quizzing her for some reaction. Alex never answered. Sometimes she wanted to, so she could begin a conversation and feel words slip past her tongue.

She was not usually a social creature, but she missed Kara, she miss J’onn and Winn too. God, even her mother giving her a lecture over the phone at this stage would feel like a blessing.

She missed Sara.

Alex felt herself starve for interactions, sometimes waiting for the interview so she could at least see another person, the moments in the darkness dragged on and felt like seconds that had passed.

Then, in what seemed like only five minutes after beginning, the man would leave. Alex would then be taken back to her cell. She would sometimes have food there, most of the time wouldn’t. She would feel her stomach gnarl at her. Her throat and tongue dry out, and each cup of water and a bowl of cold food would be like a godsend. Just enough to keep her going. Just enough to stop her from dying in the short-term.

It was probably drugged, but what could she tell? Her mental state was frayed enough that she couldn’t determine if it was illness, deprivation or just torture doing this to her, any of them was a reasonable response.

Her body never seemed to heal. Her ribs still ached, her bruises ached. Sometimes she would awake to a sharp headache. Other times she would feel a fever break over her body. The worst was the insomnia. Lying awake in the darkness, unable to sense time pass. Unable to tell if she’d slept or trailed off in thought.

She didn’t cry out while she was awake, but she wanted to. So that she could feel herself scream. Most of the time she laid down, sometimes sitting up and staring at the darkness, wondering about Kara, wondering about J’onn, the DEO, her recruits.

What were her recruits thinking as Vasquez continued to train them? Had the two weeks past? Did Vasquez mention what happened, or were they been perpetually lied to everyday? They’d hate that, all of them, and yet it was something they’d have to get used to working in the field. Need to Know basis.

God, she didn’t want this to be the first time they were made aware that people they knew and worked with would disappear. That was too much for them.

The guilt from that thought wound around her. Then the anger at herself for getting in the situation would toss and turn with the guilt  until Alex could safely say that she’d hit a depressive state. This time, with no alcohol or sparring as an outlet.

What had the DEO taught her? Prisoner’s in isolation, with no known release, tendered to deteriorate faster in a mental capacity than their counterparts who did know of a release date.

In her dreams, most times she fell asleep she would awake wherever Sara was. Sometimes it was in her bedroom, sometimes in the strange museum-area that opened up to the command of the ship. A few times it was in what Alex presumed to be the library.

Alex would tip-toe out of the room before Sara would awake and she would try to slip back into the darkness. It wasn’t an easy art to untether herself from the dreamscape. A part of her was starving for human contact and Sara had felt like a friend, even if she wasn’t real.

Sometimes she would go out into the hallway, desperately trying to untether herself as she fought back from running to Sara and _making her believe_ that she wasn’t Mallus.

Being on the Waverider had become a nightmare. She dreaded sleeping, would sometimes try to stop it, but her body felt drained, exhausted all the time, and her thoughts could barely hold a plan. Eventually, she would sleep. She would wake. And then it would start over.

She would be awaken by a light, sometimes a kick or just to the feeling of being dragged to her feet. She would be taken to the room. Pulled, half-carried or just pushed. She would sit in the chair, she would not answer his questions. The man seemed to be getting increasingly frustrated with her.

She would go back to her cell and sometimes eat, pushing around the room, walking around it to find something to keep awake.

She would eventually go to sleep. She would sometimes wake up on the Waverider. She would sometimes untether herself from the dream, sometimes walk away and find a quiet area to cry until she could untether herself. She would wake.

Repeat.

She stopped counting her Waverider dreams. She stopped counting the food. She started wondering if Kara was coming at all. She started hoping to disappear into the abyss.

She stopped listening to the questions and looking around for an exit.

She fought back twice. She'd been trying to escape her chains and found herself punched back. The first time it was straight into the wall. The second time, she was thrown to the ground and her arm was broken before Alex even realised it was going to happen. The bone snapped and it was all Alex could hear as she cried out and the woman glared at her. “I warned you,” she said. Her arm was useless. If she didn’t get proper medical treatment soon, there was a good chance that it would heal badly.

She was tired. She was hungry and thirsty and dirty and starving for human contact. Sara wouldn’t look at her.

The routine repeated. There was a light. There was a woman. She was dragged down the hall. She sat in the plastic chair. The man asked her a question. She didn’t listen. He left, she was taken back. She lied down under her blanket until she fell asleep. Sara laid asleep in her bed. Alex awoke. There was a light. There was a woman. She walked down the hall, she sat in the chair. The man asked her a question.

“What is your favourite drink?”

“Whiskey,” she answered. _There_. _It’s done_.

Her shoulders eased with the word like she confessed a guilty secret. The relief lasted for only a moment as, from across the table, the man smiled at her. Alex felt her stomach clench, nausea running over her body as her headache increased. How long had that taken, she wondered.

A few days? A week maybe or a month?

_I’m sorry Kara,_ she thought. It felt like a whisper in her head.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If she touches her, Alex will alight and crumble into ash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been a while, I'm so sorry. I've been dealing with the stress of this new job and honestly have felt so unmotivated to everything except streaming stuff through my tv. 
> 
> But I decided to just edit this chapter I've had sitting around for a while, and I can feel writer self rallying to crack out some new stuff. 
> 
> Thank you all for being patient.

The questions came, and Alex answered each one that related to herself. At any mention of Kara, she would go quiet. Even if it was something small, the risk, although it might be a lie, was too high.

And yet she rationed questions about herself, allowing only a single worded answered. What did vehicle did she drive to work? Motorcycle. How many bones in her body had she broken? Numerous. How many years had she known Supergirl? Four. She yearned for the words, spoke each one as if it was her drug of choice. With each word she spoke, the relief of human interaction grew smaller and smaller until it wasn’t enough.

It didn’t help that every time Alex came to back to her room, there was a different meal awaiting her return. Hot steak with roast vegetables. Chicken parm with salad and fries, a burger with the lot.

Instead of a cup of water, she was given a substantially larger bottle to pace herself with.

She laughed the first time. The sound echoed so that the woman backhanded her until she was quiet.

What a waste.

Alex knew what the food was. A bribe to condition her with speaking to continue receiving the food. If she didn’t think it was drugged before, she knew it now. Despite the food, her limbs felt heavy, her body ached. She was always exhausted, always nauseous, always in pain. 

She ate the food anyway.

The fourth time, the man offered her a bed if she answered a small question about Supergirl. She considered it in silence, long enough to dream of her bed at home, but her silence was his only answer. There was no food awaiting her return.

Alex didn’t dream of Sara that night.

Instead, she dreamt of her recruits. That they had come and found her and then Veronica had appeared, laughing. She dreamt of Kara asking her why she’d betrayed her. She dreamt of J’onn, mediating with his father, they had been stoic and unresponsive.

Days seemed to pass as Alex drifted between questions and dreams, day after day a relentless string of nightmares and darkness. It seemed to that she had stopped dreaming of Sara and she felt all the worse - Alex had lost the one shred of human connection that gave her hope.

Sara was gone.

And then the darkness spoke. Its voice uncertain and whispering, “Was this a trick?”

Alex jolted at the words, her skin breaking out in gooseflesh. 

“Sara?” she asked, throat was sore as she said the word. Hoarse. How long had been since she'd last spoken?

“Were you some minion working for Mallus?”

“No," Alex answered, the word feeling like glass in her throat.

She heard the chains rattle, and then the feeling of someone sitting close by her. Like shoes and cloth scraping on concrete, and the sense of warmth radiating near her hands. Sara hadn’t touched her, and for that, Alex was almost thankful. If she did, then Alex might alight with the touch, crumbling into ash.

She dragged her hands closer to herself.

“Alex…who has you?”

Was that a trick, she wondered, the empathy in Sara’s voice. Only moments before it had sounded cold and withdrawn, to now be…soft and gentle. It made no sense. Maybe this was a different dream. A dream-dream, like the others she'd had.

“Alex?” it felt strange to hear her name said aloud. It’d been a long time coming since she'd heard it. At least it felt like a long time. “I guess I deserve that." 

Deserve what, Alex wondered. She was sure it was the dehydration, or starvation causing it. Her head felt so muddled, like Sara’s words turned to static in her head and losing all sense of meaning.

“Look, I’m sorry for ignoring you. I was so sure you were Mallus, and now, now we have Damien, fucking, Darkh. He has no freaking clue about you. I don't even think he was playing dumb…” there was a pause, and then Sara sighed as if she wanted to say something, but was holding back.

It felt almost like Sara was disappearing in the quiet. Fading away as a dream often did when you became aware of it.

There was nothing, no sound or feeling except her breath pulling into her lungs and then exhaling slowly.

Then, there were the gentle weight of Sara fingers as she reached out, a soft graze at first, and then heavy against Alex’s palm. 

Alex didn't turn to ash.

It was like a fog had cleared from Alex’s thoughts. Her heart ached all at once at the touch. She tore away from it, curling into herself as she felt a sob rise in her throat. It felt too good, too sudden, too lovely to be real. Like all of her emotions appeared, and at once Alex felt the depth of her anguish.

She was starving to be touched, to be spoken to as a person, to be a person and it felt beautiful and awful and cruel to have that given to her from someone that had spent the last length of time tormenting her with absence.

Like dam walls crumbling, Alex felt the sob rise in her chest, clench at her throat and then tear its way out of her mouth, despite how her jaw shook from the refrained determination to not making a sound.

Once the first escaped, there was nothing to stop the rest. Alex's body shook, the sound squeezing through her jaw, despite how she tried to hold it back.

And then Sara was there, lifting her into her arms and holding her firmly against her body.

There was a hushing sound — a shushing. And Alex felt her cries soften as through the soft material of Sara’s shirt; she could hear her heart. It was a steady beat. A slow, thud-thud that carried as Sara drew a hand over her head to soothe.

“I must smell,” Alex said. The first clear thought she had. It was a disgusting feeling, to be in the clothes for so long. There was a layer of grime from everything, a layer of oil from her body that she wanted to cleanse herself from.

“I live with boys,” Sara said. “Well, I live with Mick. Nate and Ray are pretty good.”

Alex laughed. It was a low, loose chuckle but it was a laugh, no less. “This is a dream, isn’t it?” she asked once she steadied herself again.

“Or something,” Sara said.

Alex didn’t want to argue, so she let it be.

“What’s happening, Danvers?”

Alex took a moment to gather herself, piecing back a semblance of neutral emotions, so she didn’t breakdown again. “Roulette –– or Veronica Sinclair –– has me,” she said, and then she began the story of what she’d been doing on her mission. There was a rhythm to telling the story as Sara listened, the feeling of laying bare everything, making it easier to find herself calming down.

She explained how she got into a car crash and what seemed to follow, drifting briefly over the blue world. She spoke of the man, the questions, the routine, the suspected drugs in the food and water.

“Probably just the water,” Sara said. “Do you ever eat the food in the light?

“No, just the dark. I mean, the people bring me in here, I see it briefly with the lamp that the, ah, the...minion uses.”

“Do you know if the water is coloured at all?”

Alex tried to think back, but she’d never had a chance to look closely. The dark-coloured cups hit the colour of the water, making it appear inky black, and the bottles weren’t transparent. “No. I never see it.”

“Any smells?”

“No.” 

“Well, that narrows it down, at least.”

“Not really, this whole room smells, my nose has been ruined by it. And who’s to say if it is something that it’s even of this Earth. Veronica’s a known alien trafficker. Last time anyone saw her, Kara left her on another planet with the people she’d been trafficking. I thought she’d be dead by now.”

Sara told her bitterly, “People like that worm their way back into power easily.”

Alex shuffled against her, moving to turn most of herself to where Sara's voice sounded. “Who’s Damian Darkh?”

Sara seemed to think for a moment, before she said, “The woman that you saw in my head, whatever plane it was on, that was Nora Darkh, his daughter. Damian is a very long story for another time." Sara took a breath, and then whispered, "he was the one to murder my sister.”

“I thought you said he was dead.”

“Resurrection magic, would you believe it?”

“No.”

Sara gave a soft chuckle. “Mm, sometimes I can’t either. But it was magic.” 

“There’s no such thing as magic.” 

“Well, Mr Dursley, I’m here to tell you the there is such a thing as magic.”

Alex felt her chest warm. The Harry Potter books. Both she and Kara had been obsessed with them back in school. It was one of the ways she learnt how to read English. “Magic isn’t real. It’s just unknown science or sleight of hand.”

“Magic exists. How do you explain this, otherwise?”

“Easily,” Alex said. “With science and process of elimination. I rule out psychosis, which is the most likely, move onto alien technologies, and then, there are metas. Cisco can travel between universes. Or perhaps travelling repetitively through dimensions and parallel universes changes the make-up of the human ––“

Sara’s fingers had pressed to her lips, hushing her words. “Magic,” she said. Even in the darkness, Alex could feel Sara’s eyes blazing at hers. She could imagine the woman smirking as she said the words, enjoying Alex’s rant. “I’ve run all the scans you need to know with Gideon, and they’ve all come up normal. There is no explanation outside of ––“

“Don’t say it.”

“Magic.”

“It could be beyond her processing.”

“It could be, but I’m not going to tell her that. Gideon can get very petty when you hurt her pride. Besides, I’ve seen enough of the world through time to see that some things go beyond science and technology." 

“Well, I’ve seen enough of this galaxy to feel the opposite. There are more than enough aliens in this universe to show that science can always find the answer if you’re willing to look long enough for it.”

“Did you just try to one-up me?”

“A little.” She felt Sara pull her back into a hug. It was a very ‘that’s my girl’ kind of hug that warmed Alex. There was also a particular feeling to it, Alex didn’t expect. She knew how she smelt, she knew how she must look, but the darkness hid that at least. But the smell would have been awful. And yet, Sara didn’t care. She held her as if it didn’t matter, as if she couldn’t smell it herself. It was…dignifying. She wanted to explain that to Sara, say thank you, but the words didn’t come out.

Instead, what she said was, “I need a shower.”

“Then let’s get you out of here.”

The hope faded in her chest at those words. “I can’t,” she said. 

“Because of these chains?” Sara’s hands were on hers, feeling around the manacles on her wrists. “Are they always chained behind your back?”

“No, sometimes they undo them and put them in front.” 

“Do you know when that happens?”

“I think it’s a conditioning reward. It happens when I’ve answered enough questions or done something right.”

“And the questions are about you and Supergirl, right?”

“Yeah,” she felt her chest grow heavy. Sara hadn't been judging her, but Alex felt her judgement as she said the word out loud. She was slowly chipping away at an image of herself. It was a dangerous thing to do.

“Answer one about Kara.” 

“No.” 

“Hear me out. I think you need to get those people to move your chains from your back to your front. At the moment they’re changing them, you can fight.”

“I’m being drugged. And my arm is broken.”

“Which arm?”

“My shooting arm.”

She felt Sara’s hands go to it then, gingerly pressing over it. Alex held back her protests, despite how painful it was. “It’d be better if I had some light, but it seems like the bone’s snapped out of place. It’s going to heal badly.”

“I know,” Alex said. Doctor’s could break it back into position, but bones that had fused wrongly tended to become weaker. Alex knew that if she got out of here, there was an awful chance that it could become permanent weakened, even with physiotherapy.

Would that be so bad? She wondered, but it wasn’t a thought for now. Now, she needed to work out a plan.

“Can you punch well with your left?”

“No, the DEO decided to leave training only for my right arm because I was assured that I would not have use of it.”

Sara let out a laugh. "At least they haven’t taken your sass.

“Point is, there’s no way I can fight my way out with a weapon. Pain or not, the arm is useless. The whole muscle is weakened by the break that I can’t even hold the chains without shaking.” 

“Well, they’re too tight to slip,” Sara said as she felt around manacles. Alex knew that too. She considered dislocating her thumbs early on, but it wouldn’t have done any good, “Could you break the chain?”

“Tried torquing the chains, but that didn’t work. The metal didn’t even budge from where the loop was closed. I’m too weak at the moment.”

“Well, that leaves the oldest trick in the book.”

“Picking the lock.”

“Picking the lock,” Sara agreed.

“That would be great, except that I don’t have anything to pick the lock with.” 

“Anything you can steal?”

Alex paused. The lamp, if she could pull it apart, but would involve overpowering the minion woman who was, already, twice her size. If she had use of her hands, and one wasn't broken, maybe she could use the woman’s mass against her, but that was something she needed to be in good health to fix.

“Maybe,” she said. “I’ll see what I can find that that’s the size of a pin.”

“Good girl,” Sara said.

Alex didn’t know about that, but she appreciated the sentiment anyway. “But how do I pick the manacles?”

Sara’s hands were feeling around the lock. “My best guess is, without actually seeing it, that you would need to carve a key that would fit into it. But you could pick the lock that’s connecting the chain to the base. The easiest way to do it would be raking it,  except you'll need the tool for that. Without one, it's easier to use the single-pin picking, which I’m sure you already know how to do.”

“Yes,” Alex said. “But the only time I use that is when I’m locked out of my house. Which doesn’t happen often.” 

“You’ll be fine. Take your time with it.” And then Sara was pulling her close again so that her head was leaning against her shoulder.

Alex exhaled, feeling the warm arm around her back, it was more comfortable to hold herself in the room and think in clear, concise thoughts. She just needed to find a pin, and then she would be able to get unchained from the ground. It did mean she might have to carry the chain with, which could be used against her, as well as restrict her movement. But…it also gave her a good, heavy weapon.

“What about the door?” Sara asked. 

“I don’t think it’s locked,” she said. She'd seen what had once looked to be a bolting mechanism on the door, but it appeared to be missing half of it. “They might have a guard, but I’ve never heard anyone outside. The guard’s footsteps usually fade down the hall.”

“Seems like lax security for a DEO agent. Do they not know who you are?”

Alex chuckled. “I don’t think so. They haven’t used my name, and all the information I was carrying on me was for a cover.” Alex thought back to Roulette and the snaking tattoo on her leg. She hadn’t seen the woman since, and the first underling she had met there, either. That seemed odd too. It could be that Roulette didn’t value her, or had other villainess things to do, but to not see her since seemed odd.

“How long have I been here?” Alex asked.

“A while,” Sara said. “I don’t know. I was…ignoring you, for the most part, busy with trying to get the totems for Mallus.”

“How long has been since…since you were in the blue world.”

 Sara drew in a sharp breath. “A while. I’ll find out, okay? Gideon keeps track of time on the ship. I just put one foot in front of the other and get through the days.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I should be the one apologising.”

“I’m sorry for how I reacted.” Sara’s face still haunted her from the blue world. The horrified, heartbroken look she gave to her as she turned away and disappeared. She never wanted to see it again.

“Alex…it’s fine. You didn’t know what that side of me was. The things I’ve done to survive Ra’s Al Ghu -- that’s not even the worst of them."

“No, it wasn’t that. It wasn’t you,” Alex drew in a breath as she thought of Kenny. She thought of the first time she fired a gun at combative enemies, hitting her target perfectly in the head, how the person had just dropped to the ground, the military grade bullets that had blown the back of target’s head open like it was just watermelon. 

Alex pulled away from Sara to make some effort at looking her into the eye. “Do you know how much I loved killing those Nazis? How right it feels to have that kickback push at my shoulder as I hit person after person. They were nobody. They were nothing to me. If Roulette comes for Kara, I won’t think twice before killing her. I will pull the trigger and then it doesn’t matter what her hopes or fears are. It doesn’t matter that she’s someone’s daughter. When it comes to it, I will kill her, and I’ll sleep easy at night.” 

“It’s not the same thing,” Sara said, her voice a whisper. 

“How is it not the same thing? You’re not naive enough to believe that the enemies we come across are all some moustache twirling villain who kick puppies in their downtime. The people we kill to keep our teams safe have hopes and fears like us. Some of them think they’re on the side of good and some of them believe they have no other choice. They’re someone’s child, someone’s sibling, someone’s partner or parent. And in the field, they know the same thing about us. It’s them or us. It’s human nature to choose yourself, to choose your team over a stranger. It's just easier if you believe they're evil.”

“Killing someone in the field isn’t the same as going into someone’s house in the dark of the night. Their house which they believe is safe to tuck in they’re kids and kiss them goodnight. And sneaking up on them as they're watching television and then killing them because they chose not to do the bad thing your boss wanted them to do."

Alex felt the air leave her lungs. She felt...stupid. Insanely stupid int hat moment.

"Would you do that if J’onn asked you to?” It was a harsh, but not a rude tone Sara took with her, but Alex didn’t have an answer. In her heart, she knew that J’onn would never ask her to that. She would never be in that situation. Maybe that was an answer in its self.

Sara continued, “I get what you’re saying, but at the end of the day, the people you killed aren’t defenceless, the people I’ve killed sometimes were just on the wrong side of my blade. They were defenceless, they were unarmed people who often just made a mistake. Say what you want, but I am a monster.”

“You’re more than just your history, Sara."

"Am I? Could you say that if you had witnessed everything I've done?"

"I don't know, because I won't ever know yourself the way you do. But I know your actions now. I've watched you with your team, and you choose to be a good person and walk in the light, not hide in the shadows. Whoever you were then doesn't matter, it's who you are now.”

Sara didn’t reply straight away. There was a beat before she said. “My sister said something similar, once.” 

“Well, she was smart.”

Sara’s hand founds hers, coming to rest upon it. “Alex,” she whispered.

But then she was gone as Alex was yanked awake and onto her feet. There was a lamp in her face, and the underling was looking at her displeased.

“I'm up,” Alex said with a slack jaw. She rolled her shoulders, feeling the tension in them from the awkward position. Her right arm throbbed painfully as the woman hurriedly moved her out of the room.

She walked with the woman down the hall, making sure to look around. The lamplight cast a low-level light down the hall, throwing shadows on the walls. There was nothing useful that she could see.

In the interviewing/break room, Alex looked around for anything. She couldn’t see any cameras. There was no glass, so there wasn’t a two-way mirror. There was, however, shrapnel on the ground in the corner of the room. It was going to hurt, but Alex had an idea about that.

The man came into the room and began with his questions. Alex didn’t answer the questions this time. There was a lightness to it, as she found herself feeling the blossoming hope in her chest for the first time. Not only did this feel entirely possible, but Alex felt as though she had an attainable goal.

And yet, getting the manacles off was just the first step. She still had to get out of the room, and then escape.

The man’s pen tapped against the notebook, a sign of annoyance as he stared at her. “What are you doing?” he asked.

Alex just looked from his hands playing with the pen, to where she could see the edges of the dagger in the belt. It was a flat blade about three inches long and about an inch and a half across, depending on how thick the sheath was.

He looked from her to his knife and pulled it out to show her. “You know, Ms Sinclair gave me this knife as a gift. Said it would be a good letter opener, as it were. Or a motivator if need-be.” He met her eyes then, but Alex wasn’t buying his bluff. If he wanted to motivate her with a knife, he would have done it a long time ago.

Still, there was something about the way he looked at her that Alex didn’t like. It was like a sick feeling came over her until she found herself blinking as she looked away, her eyes dry from staring.

“Perhaps we should pick this up next time,” he said.

Alex watched him leave, sheathing his knife, pocketing the pen and notebook before finally placing his jacket back on. She felt exhausted by the questions all of a sudden. Like all the energy had been sapped from her. 

As the woman returned to take her back to the room, Alex made a show of taking her time. Easing off the chair as if it pained her.

As the woman lead her past where the swept shrapnel and dust had been on the ground, Alex feigned a stumble and fell back against the wall, crying out as it hit her arm before throwing her back onto ass, right in front of it. It hurt like hell against her broken arm, probably pushing it further out of place.

The woman glared at her. “Get back onto your feet,” she demanded as she tugged at the chains. 

Alex’s hands scrambled at the muck. I would have been easier if she could see.

She made a show of trying to get to her feet and failing before the woman just grabbed her right arm and yanked her up. With a moan of pain, Alex stumbled on her feet again, but held her stance, hissing in a breath as she woman marched her back to the room.

There was no food on the ground, and this time, Alex noticed that her blanket was gone. The man was setting out to punish her. Good, she'll use it as motivation.

Alex took her place and watched the chains while the woman locked them into place. She moved, blocking Alex’s view of where she pulled and hid the keys used to secure the links on either end. That was fine. Trying to take them would be harder. If Alex even tried to fake-stumble against her, the woman would immediately go to check that they were still there.

It didn’t matter though; she had the necessary tools. As the door shut behind the woman, Alex felt for the pin that she had grabbed from the ground. She bent it as required and then moved to where the padlock was on the chain, connecting it to the welded loop on the floor. It’d be more comfortable if she could see it, but the primary function was there.

Alex worked her way around it, using the pin as she tried to feel for the driver and key pins. Alex had learnt how to pick a lock back in training and had once excelled at it, but she was out of practice. That was on top of trying to keep her bad arm in a position, as well as working blind.

Even though there had been no food or water to drug her in the room, and she’d eaten well in the past few days, Alex felt exhausted. Run a marathon, all-nighter, have the flu exhausted. Her arms grew heavy, aching in the position and although she knew she wasn’t quitting, just…trying to rest. It still felt like surrender.

She hid the pin in her clothes and found herself dropping tiredly on the ground, thinking of Sara. There were still bits of the plan she needed to consider. Bits of… 

Why was she so tired, she’d only been awake for an...for an...what was the word... 

A metric unit of time...?


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's nothing Alex wouldn't do for her sister

 

She was on the Waverider. There was the familiar hum beneath her feet. As always the ship was quiet and clean. So clean that catching a glimpse of her hands or the material of her clothes made them feel all the more disgusting. Alex took a breath and looked away to find where Sara was.

There, Sara was slumped in a chair as if she had fallen asleep mid-thought. Her head lifted as she awoke to Alex. “Are you free?” she asked, stretching as she unfolded her legs and eased herself onto her feet.

“Free? It’s only been an hour,” Alex said. Perhaps if she had been able to unlock those cuffs within that hour, she might be free. As it were, she had taken a power nap instead.

But Sara was frowning at her. “Alex, it's been a day.”

A whole-day didn’t fit in with Alex’s timeline, “No, I woke up, I went to the fake-Russian guy who asked me a few questions and then I came back to the room I’m chained up in and spent maybe half an hour on that lock before I decided to, um, take a nap.”

“It’s been a full day here. Spent the whole day getting ready for the big takedown.”

“Maybe it’s a time difference?” she asked, but it didn’t seem right. Both her and Sara had been meeting in chronological order. It didn’t make sense for a sudden shift in time differences.

“Maybe,” Sara agreed. “I don’t think so, but who knows.”

As much as she tried to think of options, she was distracted by how dirty she felt. On the clean ship, it was easy to see the soot and grime that streaked over her clothes. “Do you think your shower works here?”

Sara grinned at her. “Let’s find out.”

She was lead through the Waverider, which held a sizeable amount of bedrooms, to what seemed to be the only bathroom. The sink was awash with different products, but there were a toilet and a shower, two separate rooms side-by-side. Both of which looked like something you expected from a ship like this.

“How hot do you like your shower?” Sara asked.

“At this point, you could give me a bucket of cold water and a sponge, and I'd be grateful for it.”

Sara nodded, looking thoughtful as she adjusted the water temperature and turned the water on. Water came out of the showerhead, and Alex nearly dove for it. She could see the steam rising and already imagine the feeling of hot water raining down on her back — the ability to wash her self.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Sara said.

“Wait could you…” Sara paused, open to whatever she was going to ask, but it seemed ridiculous. Sara wasn’t running away. “Never mind, it’s okay.”

“I’ll stay,” Sara said. “Do you need help?”

“Please.”

Sara helped her out of her clothes, gently removing it over the broken arm that Alex cradled against herself, now free of any restraints. She could see the marks around her wrist that would take a while to heal — if ever — and bruises that ran over her shoulders and down her legs.

Sara gave her privacy in the shower, leaning against the sink as Alex took the time to wash, removing the layer of grime on her body. It was only for the dream, and she knew that when she awoke, it would all be there. But there was still a comfort to the shower. It gave her time to think over her lost time.

Lots of medication caused memory loss. Local anaesthesia was the most common one, that also had the side effect of paralysis. Alex didn’t find herself changing positions or anything that seemed invasive. If anything, the only difference seemed to be how exhausted she felt by the end.

But that hadn’t happened until –– “He’s a fucking telepath!”

“What?”

Alex opened the shower door, looking at Sara. “The man, the man who asks all the strange questions. That’s why they seem of no consequence. He’s a telepath.”

“Why doesn’t he just read your mind, straight out then?”

“Maybe he has low-level telepathy, or he doesn’t know how to read minds properly, or maybe he’s just new to telepathy, there’s lots of devices off-world in the trading market that we just haven’t developed yet. Not to mention that humans don’t think in strings of words and sentences all of the time, most of our thoughts are just a mixture of concepts, images and emotions.”

Sara blinked at her. “So he’s trying to trigger specific thought responses? Lead you into giving away answers.”

“All of this time I was treating it like a human one, but even in thinking of an answer in some way I was giving him something.” Alex began to feel the panic set in from the revelation. “Oh my god, I don’t know what I’ve shown him, he might know everything and is just trying to piece any other valuable bits of information together. Roulette might already know. Kara ––“

“Hey,” Sara said, pulling her eyes to hers. “Breathe. You can’t think of that now. You need to escape before you can worry about that.”

Alex nodded. Drawing in her breath, “Right, so I pick the lock and then… But what do I do if they come for me first? I don’t know how to guard my thoughts that well. It wasn’t something J’onn ever taught me outside of, you know, quietening my thoughts.”

“So, quieten your thoughts.”

“But that doesn’t hide them,” Alex said. “It just makes them…not-loud.”

Sara looked at her, raising her brow. “Well, you’re good at keeping your mind on a single topic in a battle. So keep your thoughts on a single subject, one that’s not going to give him any information.”

Alex drew a breath, slipping back until she leant against the shower wall. “Easier said than done.”

“Just focus on shampooing your hair, maybe you could learn how to do it one-handed since you’ve ––“ and then Sara pushed off from the sink and came to stand right before her. “Do you mind?” she asked, gesturing to her head. Alex nodded, watching as Sara rolled up the three-quarter sleeves of the white shirt before bringing her hands to her hair, massaging the shampoo over Alex’s scalp.

Alex shut her eyes, melting into the touch as she felt the shower continue to rain down on her shoulders and back. There was creeping anxiety in the different states of undress she had between herself and Sara, but the feeling of being clean and out of those clothes, and the way Sara’s hands massaged over her scalp far outweighed her modesty. Besides, this was a woman who had seen her with her clothes off before.

Alex tilted her head forward, washing the lathered shampoo out of her hair.

Alex felt her mind going back to the drunken night. She remembered flashes of moments in the travel between the dinner and the hotel room. She remembered Sara's laughter in her ear as they stumbled out of the elevator, onto the wrong floor. The way Sara's cheesy one-liners had honestly sounded so hilarious to her between drunken kisses.

That night had been freeing at the time before the morning came. She woke up with a headache, nausea and strong arms around her waist that weren't Maggie's.

It was funny because despite everything had gone through, she hadn't even thought of Maggie until now.

Alex felt Sara’s hand begin to condition her hair. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Well, I want to,” Sara shrugged, tilting Alex’s head back to wash the conditioner off. Her thumbs brushed behind Alex’s ears, down to the base of her skull, though her eyes fixated on what Alex presumed was the bump on her forehead.

“It’s fine,” Alex said.

“It’s going to scar.”

“Then it’ll scar, it won’t be my last.”

To that, Sara smiled at her, her hands still in Alex’s hair. And then she seemed to remember that Alex was undressed and stepped away, closing the door as she muttered about getting her a towel.

Alex didn’t know what to take from that. A part of her thought of how Sara had looked at her, and another part of her reminded that the last time she felt that way, crippling rejection had followed. She was not going to be leaping on women she thought was giving off vibes. No matter how much their eyes looked like an ocean amid an electrical storm.

Turning the shower off, she stepped out, wrapping herself in the towel left by the door. Sara then proceeded to drop another one on her head, leaving Alex feeling like she was five years old again.

“I found the metal you’re using,” Sara said, holding up the piece of metal. It looked like it had once been a loose steel wire. It was thin. Enough so that if she twisted it tighter and tighter, it would eventually snap.

“You’ll want to bend it further up, so it slips in smoother. I should show you how to make a rake, so it’d be easier to unlock.”

“It’s fine. doing it one handed is difficult enough.”

“You’re using the other the twist it then, so the pegs lock into place when you tap them?”

“What?”

Sara smiled at her and then proceeded to go into a lecture about how to pick a lock while drawing a somewhat decent picture with her finger on steam. She eventually had to get a pen and paper to make her point, but Alex was fascinated by it, nonetheless. It took her back to her studies back when she had first begun working for the DEO.

Most of it, she knew well enough. She had remembered to turn the pin slightly but had somehow forgotten to do that part while having a broken arm.

“Okay, I think I’ve got it.”

“Good, then it’s time to wake-up,” Sara said. “The sooner you get out of there, before you’re exhausted again, the faster you can get to Kara.”

Alex agreed. Although she was unsure in how to admit that waking up, after moments of cleanliness, comfort and friendship, made her feel nauseous.

Alex didn’t know what to expect. She didn’t know if she could make it out of there, or if that guy would creep his way into her head and somehow erase all memories of what transpired. Or worse.

The very thought of someone crawling through her brain made her feel violated. J’onn had always given her the utmost privacy that he could provide with his ability. To feel it used against her, felt…slimy. Like there was greasy slug trail all over brain from where he’d been.

She couldn’t wait to punch him in the face.

“Time to wake up,” she agreed.

Sara smiled at her, and then, what had to be pushing up on her tiptoes, kissed Alex's forehead. "You've got this, Danvers."

Alex woke up. It was dark in the room, and all at once she felt the cold against her. There were layers of dirt and grit on her skin, heavy coating of oils in her hair. If possible, she felt even dirtier than before she had fallen asleep. Dirtier and colder. And yet, she could still feel the imprint of Sara's lips on her forehead.

Alex sat up. She was going to escape.

Alex pulled the metal from where she’d hidden it on her person and bent it as Sara had instructed her to.

She jiggled with the lock, feeling her right arm complain at being misused. Without really thinking about it, she found herself promising it that she would see the best doctor to fix it, and would do all the physiotherapy exercises she would be asked to complete. Even that stupid stress ball one, if it would just hold out for a little bit longer.

The lock clicked.

Slowly, and then quickly, Alex drew the chains away from the lock. They were hefty, awkward, but she was able to carry them against her chest. She felt a bubbling laugh rise in her chest before she remembered that getting out of the chains didn’t mean that she was out of here yet.

Drawing a deep breath, she attempted to quell rising nausea. One step at a time.

Alex listed for the sound of running footfalls. There was nothing — just the sound of a draft outside of the door in the room.

Alex crept closer to the door that barred her from the hallway. She held onto the chains, bringing the weight against her chest as she eased the door open to the hall. It creaked into the darkness, but no one seemed to be there to hear it. Perhaps she had a chance.

Alex crept in the dark. She knew how to get to the break room, but how far would that have been from a door?

Was it a factory and this was the upper-level office section? A warehouse and she just needed to find the loading docks?

She crept along with the shadows, listening for any sounds. The walls all seemed to be those temporary ones that didn’t quite meet the ceiling. The ground was hard, concrete.

Alex went through a few open doors, jiggling a few locked ones that were probably leading to the exit, but more likely to nowhere. It seemed strange not to come across another person. Where the hell was everyone? She opened a few more doors, coming to dark, empty storage rooms. There were marks on the walls where signage had probably once been, but so far, the place seemed to have been stripped of everything aside from rubbish.

She couldn’t see cameras, but she could see fire alarms that had been pulled out, the batteries taken from inside of the plastic containers.

It seemed to be a long since abandoned building for something.

Alex found a door that led her into a small room, with a broken window. It was the first window she'd seen, and it looked out to the night sky.

Graffiti covered the room. Black and red spray paint that was just a bunch of kids random tags against some aimless slurs but none of that held anything aside from moments of Alex's attention as she looked at the door.

Could it be that easy?

It was a tall, heavy double door made of wood. She turned the handle, and it opened out into the night air.

Drawing in a breath of the air, she felt like she could almost laugh as she looked up to the moon. It was three-quarters full, and the stars were brighter and more brilliant than she’d ever seen before. How beautiful, how wonderful.

She drew in another breath and felt a giddy bubble rise into her chest as her broken shoes stepped out onto the loose gravel. There were no lights nearby, but in the moonlight, she could see hills sparsely covered in trees.

She'll have to walk up the hill to see if there was a town nearby to go to, but it was something at least. She was out. She could get to the next place. She just had to avoid being caught again.

And then she caught sight of headlights coming between the silhouette of trees. No, it wasn't going to be easy.

Taking her chains, she ducked behind the side of the building, to where industrial garbage was, and watched as the car pulled up into the large open gravel area.

The building's internal contents were strange, but on the outside, it looked to be an abandoned industrial site. Wherever she was, it seemed to be a loading bay for trucks.

The engine cut off, and the man stepped out, followed by the minion woman. They closed the doors of the car, the distant sound of chatter coming from them as the woman carried what looked to be a grocery bag and take away.

The man was holding a takeaway coffee. He took a sip and then he paused, looking over at Alex’s direction. There was no way he should have been able to see her, and yet Alex watched as he nudged at the woman and pointed towards her direction.

Fucking telepath. Alex tried to shut down the thoughts before she looked around her. There were a few waste containers — old, filled with rubbish like parts of the building that had been gutted out. There was no way she could sneak into one of them without being seen.

Beyond the bins were the trees. Holding the chains against her chest, Alex made a low run for the trees in the shadows, ducking into the scrub.

The tree was tall and smooth, a whisper running through its leave in the wind. Alex drew a breath and looked behind her where the woman stood at the waste containers, looking around.

She was a large, stocky woman and Alex already knew she was dangerous. As she watched the woman head around the bins, opening them up to peek inside, Alex made a move to the next tree.

“Come out, come out,” the man said in the distance. “I know that you know, Alex.”

Alex bristled at the mention of her name. How long had he known that and withheld it? Alex pulled away from the anger, quietening her thoughts. She didn’t know if he could locate her through her telepathy, or if he'd just been aware that she was outside.

The woman had stopped looking at the containers and had moved to the trees. She had a stick in her hand, or maybe a baton, long and thin for a better beating. Alex eyed her. She would need to get the advantage of the woman and overpower her first.

Alex went to move, but a chain jingled. The woman's head whipped to her direction before a slow smirk pulled over her face, and she began stalking over to her.

Alex dropped the chains, taking hold of the end in her hand as the woman came towards her. Alex drew in several deep breaths, feeling the race of her heart. She couldn’t let the adrenaline give her the shakes. She had to be fast and smart about it.

And then Alex ran forward, using a fallen bough to leap up and land onto the woman's torso.

With the end of the chain in hand, she cast a loop around the woman’s neck, her legs catching onto the broad torso and clasping onto her as she drew the shackles tight, wrapping another and then another loop around the minion's neck, before tugging her arms up sharply. The woman grasped as the chain, and Alex felt her broken arm wrench at the movement.

But she clenched her jaw, holding firm despite the pain.

The woman struggled to run sideways, shoving the side of the body Alex had clutched to against the tree, but as the seconds past, her movements weakened. The woman clawed, her nails dragging against her skin. She rammed against the tree and Alex’s head knocked –– hard –– against it, but she held onto the chains, listening to her splutter as the oxygen was cut off to her head.

She didn’t know where the man was, but he wasn’t here and even as the woman dropped to her knees. Even as her hands slacked and slumped in the dirt, Alex didn’t slacker her grip until she was sure.

She counted the seconds, and then she removed the chains.

Alex’s legs shook. Her whole body shook from the exertion of the attack. She stopped, waiting for her head to cease pounding as she drew her breaths, and then she rose again, looking over to where the car reained stationary. Its lights were still on, but the man wasn’t there.

Alex looked around, she didn’t know if he or the woman had keys, but she did know that the man knew her name, and if he knew that then what little he knew about Kara was dangerous. There was no way she was leaving yet.

Looking around, Alex tried to see where he may have gone. The loose gravel on compact dirt made it hard to see any signs of him.

Until a gun pressed against her temple as he came out from behind her in the shadows. She took a breath, quietening her thoughts as she looked out the corner of her eye, trying to catch a glimpse of him. “If you stayed in the cell, we could have gone through a few more sessions and be done with it,” he told her. Gone was the Russian voice, replaced by...an Australian one?

“For what?" She asked, "Information on Supergirl?”

“On you…or your sister,” he shrugged. “There’s something there, some connection between your sister and Supergirl. It's all too much of a coincidence.”

Alex hissed out a breath, feeling her thoughts edge towards that truth before they snapped back to Sara; Sara’s eyes, her smile, the freckles across her skin.

“See, who is that woman? You’re always thinking of her. Every thought is layered with that woman. I spent hours in your brain, going over every memory, every connection to find something, and every time you would draw back to her, but I looked. And there's no Sara Lance. There’s a Laurel Lance, but she doesn’t look like that woman, whoever she is.”

Laurel… A flood of thoughts came, and she could feel the man immerse himself in them. Alex struck, pushing his wrist away from her head –– the gun fired into the night’s air –– before she turned around to face him. She had the chains on his arm before he could pull back.

He reached for the hand with the gun, raising his leg to make a kick at shins, but Alex kicked at his chest first. She held her grip in the chains,  keeping him suspended between falling and standing.

She kicked him again, unwound the arm and watched him fall with the momentum as he dropped the gun onto the ground.

Alex grabbed the weapon before he could and aimed it at him, stepping back out of distance from him. “You move, I fire,” she promised.

He didn’t move, remaining crouched on the ground, halfway between reaching out to grab at the chain.

“The way I see it, you have two options,” she said. “I kill you, or you tell me what Roulette knows about my sister, and I drag your ass back to the DEO. Maybe you live.”

“Why would I tell you anything.”

“Read my mind.”

Now that she was aware, she could feel the cold shiver as something seeped over her, pulling at the electricity in the brain to read how she promised to draw out a slow, painful death if he refused, or drag his ass back to the DEO if he helped. Maybe there was a future for him, and he could find redemption in their group of misfits, it wouldn't be the first time.

“She knows about your sister,” he said. “She knows who you are, and she knows to use Maggie Sawyer and Kara Danvers against you. That’s everything I gave her. She doesn’t know about Supergirl’s weakness to Kryptonite yet. I haven’t had a chance to speak to her since last week, and I won't tell her, just...just take me to the DEO.”

Alex nodded, “Then that secret dies with you,” was all she said, watching as his face turned from disbelief into terror as she fired the rounds into his head.

His body crumpled, dragging at the chains and Alex sighed, feeling the broken arm throb bad enough to make her almost vomit.

She needed a hospital.

Alex let out a breath and shut her eyes, waiting for the guilt, the self-pity to come. But it didn’t — not this time.

It’d been a long time since she’d killed an unarmed person, maybe she was just in shock.

Crouching down, she unwrapped the chains and began digging around the man’s pockets, removing his jacket and placing it over her cold body. She then walked over to the corpse of the minion woman, dug around her pockets until she found the keys to the car and went back to where it remained parked, headlights still alight.

She climbed into the driver’s seat and blinked. There was no steering wheel in front of her.

Then she noticed the other seat. It was on the right-hand side.

Alex moved to the driver’s side of the car.

Turning the ignition, she put the car into drive and drove out down the loose gravel road. She doubted that the two worked by themselves for Roulette. They’d have to have someone above them, someone to report to whilst Roulette spun her web.

The road was quiet. Alex didn’t know where she was, but it was a backroad, going by the gravel. The drive went for a while, and then it turned onto a bitumen road. And then Alex had some idea of where she was. There was a green sign telling her how many miles it was to the next town. 120 to Tarcutta. Well, the lettering seemed to indicate English so far, which ruled out both Russia and China.

It wasn’t until the next sign said ’50 - Tarcutta' (which was a lot faster than it should have been, Alex felt) that she saw another car, driving on her side of the road. It honked at her and Alex realised that perhaps she was driving on the wrong side of the road, the driver’s seat was on the wrong side, so it made sense.

Which she should have known, but Alex had just escaped and was still feeling heart palpitations from the event, expecting a car to run her off the road at any moment. So she was giving herself some slack.

The car and road narrowed it down further. Maybe she was in Britain? The English drove on the left, didn't they?

“What the actual fuck,” she whispered under her breath. Why had she been taken to England of all places? Why in that building? Why anything?

Was it all for Supergirl?

Alex continued to drive, eyeing the speedometer that was a little touchier than she was used to, it wasn’t as though the answers would appear in the cold of the night.

Tarcutta seemed to be a small town, though no-one was around. The police station was a little house, the lights dark, and she had no idea where anything was, like a hospital. There was a couple of truck pulled up in what seemed to be a truck parking area in the middle of two roads, but they were all in their cabs, deep asleep.

At the gas station, there was a sign out for cherries that seemed to be a rather steep price for cherries, though it was asking it for by the kilogram so maybe her math was off.

Besides, she still had manacles on her arms, and 120 miles wasn’t that far from where she’d been. The further she got from that place, the safer she would feel.

Alex navigated through the central part of town, down what seemed to be labelled the Old Hume Highway — then continued for what felt like maybe another hour. It was a relatively straight strip, and her mind was getting a little fuzzy as she drove. Eventually, she came to a place called Albury-Wodonga.

For a few miles, it seemed to be nothing but empty land, void of anything but what appeared to be farmland, going by their fence lines.

Eventually, sign's began to advise her to pull off the highway to get into the industrial side of the town.

Blue signs were leading to the hospital as Alex made her way through the quiet streets. There were a few drunk kids were walking around McDonald's, there were even a few cars around, but no one minded her. As much as she wanted to get out and shout for help, she knew the best support would be at either a police station or a hospital. Given that there were no signs to the police station that she could find yet, but plenty to the hospital, she continued on her path there.

It seemed to be a far way out of what she had presumed to be the town. Whatever the place was, most buildings didn’t go beyond two stories, and even that was being generous. Everything seemed to be single storied blocks. Only the new development seemed to rise above that.

The hospital was easy to see once she arrived, and the emergency room was clearly labelled.

Alex went there. She went inside and watched heads watch her strangely as she went to the section that read ‘see Nurse first’ and then she stood there as a nurse came to the window.

“I need your help,” she said, her voice was hoarse. It felt sore, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d drunk any water.

Whether it was her appearance, the chains or the way she cradled her broken arm, the woman brought her from the waiting room of the ER, into her section despite the ten or so people waiting their turn.

The Nurse asked her a few questions which Alex found her self restrictively answering.

The woman was middle-aged with dark hair and crinkles around her eyes and face. She didn’t smile much, but she listened to what Alex said.

Alex told her she'd been kidnapped that she had escaped not far out from a town that seemed to be about fifty or so miles (kilometres?) north. She said she had a broken arm, that she wasn’t sure how long the bone had been fractured.

In response, the woman explained to where she was. (Australia! Australia had the same wall sockets as China, of course. How had she forgotten that?)

The woman gave her a bottle of water and Alex downed it fast. The nurse's eyes widened before softening in sympathy as she offered her another bottle.

"Thank you," Alex said, trying not to cry at the gesture.

"We have a few more questions for you if you're ready?"

"Okay," Alex said.

After the nurse had finished the triage part of the questioning, Alex asked for the American Embassy number, "and a phone line. I have no access to money, but once I can get in contact with the embassy, I'll be able to access all of that."

"I'll see what I can do. Our priority is your health first."

A nurse lead her into intensive care where a different nursing staff took over, asking her a few questions. There was a doctor in turquoise scrubs that was awkwardly danced around topics that Alex cut through. "I wasn't sexually assaulted. I was hit a few times, and I have an avulsion fracture to my radius. As you can I've also been chained," she said lifting the manacles. "All I want is a good shower if that's possible? I want to feel clean. At least cleaner."

"I can have that arranged."

A nurse in blue helped to shower her, and it was as good as her dream had been, despite the way the room smelt of chemicals.

She’d helped wash her hair, reach her back and didn't once ask questions about any of the scars or marks, though Alex saw her fearfully curious eyes dancing from new injuries to old.

Once Alex was clean, the nurse provided her with a hospital gown with, unfortunately, an adult diaper as it was all they had on that floor. "Look, I'll take anything clean at this stage," she said, moving into it.

It was a little embarrassing, she thought, but at the same time, it was clean cotton against her clean skin and Alex wanted nothing to do with the ruined clothes -- though she noticed the nurse bag it with her gloves. It probably to supply as evidence for the police.

Once Alex was back on the emergency department's pseudo beds, she began talking about things to expect in the hospital, future medical investigations, what treatment to expect, what the procedures in the hospital were around crisis, the rhythm of words felt soothing like she knew what was going to happen, so it was all going to be okay.

The nurse didn’t talk about the mangles except to make sure to clean her wrists as best she could with the obstruction.

Twice she checked with her emotionally. Twice Alex brushed the answer off tiredly.

And then Alex was hooked up to an IV for fluids, given some drugs fand an x-ray for her arm. Two doctors spoke to her briefly, examined her injuries so far. They were blunter with their questions, although they asked them gently. They looked at her manacles, moving them around and considered options of removal. Someone brought up that a “tradie” might be able to do it.

Then there was more muttering as if they'd forgotten Alex existed as a person in the conversation. It began to piss her off until she saw the nurse roll her eyes and chuck her a wink.

Alex liked the nurse a lot.

After the staff left and the curtains were pulled back around her, she closed her eyes against and leant back against the bed and found herself opening her eyes every time footsteps came near her.

And then the police came around, introducing themselves with titles that Alex faded over. All of her words were muddled by this stage. She kept tiredly correcting herself or stumbling to find the exact word she needed for the situation.

The nurses were taking her blood pressure and heart rate by the hour.

“So do you know the perpetrators who kidnapped you?”

“There was a man, and a woman,” Alex explained. “I never got their name.”

A nurse appeared then with two trays of food. “Ham and cheese okay?” she asked. There were three sandwiches, two bottles of water and even some ice cream that had been scrounged up for her. Honestly, it was the sweetest thing that had happened outside of her shower.

“Thank you,” Alex said. And then she took the sandwich, not caring if it was impolite as she removed it from its plastic container and bit into it. Without a doubt, there would never be a sandwich taste as good in her life as that. Nothing would ever beat that moment as she felt the food hit her tongue. Whatever they had been feeding her in that place hadn't been bland in comparison to ham, cheese and tomato sandwiches.

The officers were polite, allowing her to finish the meal.

“The man spoke with a European accent. A, ah, Russian accent, but it didn’t sound authentic. He was six foot one maybe and had a light face, er, beard. He was ah, caucasian descent with grey-blue eyes. There was an edge of a tattoo on his neck I couldn’t see. Just a black smudge here,” she showed on her neck. “But it was hidden by his shirt collar. His hairline was...was going back. Receding. He also had a big, thin nose, teeth seemed to be straight, there was nothing that stood out about him,” she explained.

Alex gave a briefer description with the woman, having seen her through lamp light and the dim lights of the hallway. "She broke my arm, was tall, strong. Really strong."

“Did they ever explain to you why they may have kidnapped you. Did the people mentioning if they were taking you somewhere…?”

Alex knew what they were asking. But it wasn’t relevant. “I believe it was for revenge,” was all she said. She respected the police here, but she knew where the matter would go.

When the police left, they gave her a card. One of them wrote the American embassy number on it, above the local police number for her.

She was still waiting for the nurses to give her phone access.

She slept for a few hours, dreaming but not of Sara. The lights were low, but it was still loud. People were crying and sometimes yelling. Nursing staff were trying to help a few boys involved in a punch-up, some drunken girl kept shuffling the toilet when the nurses weren't looking and then being barked at to return to where she was. There was a pair of about-to-be young parents checking the status of stomach pains after a night of binge drinking.

And between those moments, the nurses were coming together, giggling with each other about their day-to-day lives outside of work, about their shift the night before, or even bad-mouthing staff on different sections.

A tradesman came around the morning, after breakfast. He looked at the manacles, took a few photos and spoke to his apprentice. Then he pulled out a few tools and removed them the manacles from around her wrists. The weight was gone.

“Thank you.”

“Not a problem. Have a good one,” the tradesman nodded and then seemed to catch himself, giving an awkward smile.

The nursing staff took the manacles, and Alex listened as they completed their ops. Her arm was placed into a sling, and she was told that they were just waiting on her being more stable before they operated on her.

She stayed until midday in the intensive care ward before she was placed into a wheelchair and taken to an actual hospital room with three other women. One was an elderly woman with respiratory problems. Another was about twenty years older than Alex and sat knitting across from her, offering her a smile. And the third was young, in her twenties and fast asleep.

“You’re booked in for some more tests today,” the new nursing staff, Alison, said as she took her ops for the report. “They’ll come round in a few hours. Have you had breakfast?”

“Yes,” Alex said. “Will I be able to call the American embassy soon?”

Alison blinked at her, then frowned. “I’ll ask if I can arrange that for you once I finish this, okay?” She smiled at Alex and Alex tried to smile back. It came out stiff. She’d been in the hospital for twelve hours, and the anxiety was only growing the longer she stayed.

None of the nursing staff knew anything about what had been going in America with Supergirl.

The whole day felt dizzy. A blur of people’s faces and she only felt more and more agitated. She turned and asked the residents in the room for anything about Supergirl. The older middle-aged woman hummed something about her grandson. The woman who looked to be twenty years her senior murmured back in broken English a few positive things about Supergirl, but nothing of news.

Alison did eventually come back, with a wheelchair in tow after lunch. “Let’s get you to the phone.”

Alex would have preferred privacy, but she understood that specific protocols were in place for her. The nurse wheeled her down a hall to the general phone, and the woman took it off its receiver and handed it to her. “Do you know the number?” she asked.

Alex gestured to the card she had, giving a mild comment about the police officers before she dialled in the number. It seemed to take her to a general call-centre queue.

After five minutes of waiting, Alison advised she would be back in a moment and headed back to her floor.

A few more minutes past before she spoke to someone, who transferred her across to a different line where she waiting in queue and then transferred again. Alex knew her procedure well enough. She went through it with the third individual who was finally able to direct her to someone of authority. Alex explained her situation carefully, advising that she did not intend to operate on Australian soil, but that she'd been kidnapped and brought over against her will.

“Mm. I see. I’ll take this through the official channels. Given the circumstances, I will be escalating it higher, but you can understand that due to the nature of this issue, it may take some time to return you to the United States.”

“I do. My primary concern is stopping this from being a big political issue,” Alex lied. Her primary concern was getting news to J'onn and seeing Kara. At least hearing from her.

“Thank you for your time. We’ll send someone down to Albury, if necessary. Otherwise, we’ll be in touch.” Don’t call us, we’ll call you. Great.

Well, that was one thing that was completed. Although Alex still felt nauseous, and her heart rate felt like it was higher than it should be, she was at a state where there was nothing further to do, except wait.

Alex hated waiting.

The nurse returned not shortly after she hung up her phone. “All go well?”

Alex pressed her lips. “As well as it can,” she responded.

“Let us know if you need anything. I believe your surgery should be booked in for tomorrow, but I’ll read through the doctor’s notes for you.”

"Thank you, I appreciate that. And look, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude before."

"Don't worry about it," the woman said. "Of all people, you can be a little bit abrasive, and we'll cut you some slack," she said, giving Alex a wink.

Back in the room, she helped Alex back into bed before reading through her note. "Tomorrow, pending any emergencies."

Tomorrow. Alex felt a deep sigh hang in her chest as laid back in her bed. It'd been bed re-made for her in her absence and felt nice to slide onto. The mattress wasn’t too bad either, but it wasn’t as good as her own.

“Oh!” Alison stopped, “Did you want a shower this afternoon?”

“No, the nurse this morning helped me with that.”

Alison nodded, smiling at her unfazed. It was one less job to worry about, Alex supposed.

She appreciated that the nursing staff had given her a gown to wear, and given her some underwear. Clean, she had been assured. Unused, for situations like this. Though they were an ugly grey-brown colour and went all the way up to her waist. She’d take it.

The senior woman, who was on the bed to her left, came over and placed a newspaper down on her table. On the front page, Alex could see a photo of her sister holding a man by his throat, her teeth bared at him in a fit of rage.

It wasn’t a quality photo, taken from the bottom of a building looking up at the scene, the person had zoomed in with a device not designed for keeping the picture in high definition for that length of distance, but there was no denying that that was her sister.

Supergirl's Gone Wild, the headline read. The article followed an opinion piece. Or rather, a thinly veiled anti-immigration, anti-superhero article detailing the dangers of both Superman and Supergirl taking their rage issues out on down-on-their-luck citizens. Alex didn’t know who the man was, but she knew her sister well enough to believe that he wasn’t just “down on his luck”.

There was also, on the top right-hand side, the date. Alex's stomach dropped as she realised how much time had passed. She had been gone for over two months.

At this stage, Alex had a clear, single thought.

Fuck Australia.

 


End file.
